I connected my laptop to another system with FireWire and booted my laptop into “Target mode” — hold down the T key while powering on the laptop. This effectively turns the laptop into a very expensive external FW enclosure. I ran DiskWarrior from the other system, and it recognized the “external” FW drive. I started a DW recovery on this drive at about 16:30 PDT. If it’s anything like the previous run, it should be done with “Step 5″ by about 07:15 tomorrow morning. (crosses fingers)
Update: Well, I let that run all night (about 16 hours), and DW looks like it hung soon after I got it started. Alsoft’s support phone still says something about hurricane Rita, even though it’s now Monday morning (when they indicate that they’ll be back) — terrible timing on my part, having a drive fail right as a hurricane strikes Alsoft. 
I’ve booted the laptop with the DiskWarrior CD, with an external FW drive. DW can “see” both the internal (failing) drive as well as the external FW drive. Let’s see how it goes…
