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Firewire networking, yes, Mac & PC… a quick FYI
I’ve been using my PC as “near-term storage” for capture files. I’ve got a TB SCSI RAID, but when that fills up, and I don’t want to take things offline, I transfer the not-needed-right-now captures to a XP box that’s loaded with big, cheap IDE drives. I just drag a capture scratch folder across the network onto the XP, delete off the RAID, and reverse when needed again. Sure it takes awhile (since I don’t have a gigabit lan) but I just let it go after hours, and it only takes a moment of “face time”.
SO… something made me think about using Firewire, and after a bit of searching (there aren’t many articles it seems on Firewiring Mac & PC’s), found the answer. It works so well I decided to take the time to let everyone here know. Non-quantified results appear to be much faster than 100Mb lan, as actual transfer speeds through a switch, along with other random network traffic, are quite a bit slower. The firewire is on the 400 bus.
Disclaimer: I’ve no idea about Tiger, it appears there are some who were using Samba/Sharepoints combo on Panther that now have issues on Tiger, and some are OK. Also, this only works w/ WinXP, not 2000, etc.
1] Have Mac-PC sharing working already, preferrably using Sharepoints & Samba via TCP/IP [other methods *may* not work w/ this setup]
2] OSX System Prefs / Network Port Configs – add a New connection, call it whatever, select Built in Firewire. Set IP address to something like 10.0.0.1 Subnet 255.0.0.0, ignore DNS & everything else
3] WinXP: plug the firewire into the Mac. When “New Hardware” wizard appears, just cancel. In Network setup, select the 1394 connection, Properties, TCP/IP settings, set IP to 10.0.0.2 Subnet 255.0.0.0 (same scheme as Mac, natch), close.
4] OK, here’s where it got a bit “grey”… after doing the above it didn’t work right away. So I disconnected ethernet & let the Mac/XP 1394 stay connected, and waited a few minutes. Shortly I was able to use the Finder Connect command to mount a share from 10.0.0.2 (the XP), using same user/pass syntax I use on ethernet connects.
5] plug ethernet back in. I’ve found NO issues so far with anything else being adversely affected. My setup has Mac/XP 1394 going through a hub, btw. I’ve got a nice, permanent, 4-10 times faster than before, Mac/PC connection for the price of a 1394 cable.Your speeds may vary, side effects may include fewer purchases of expensive external drives.
Bob Woodhead / Atlanta
Quantel-Avid-FCP-3D-Crayola
G5 DP 2G, 10.3.4, 3.5GB RAM, FCP 4.5, Aja IO, Huge 320R [raid3] -
12 Replies
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Okay I’ll nominate you for Geekdom–meant in a good way.
Nice trick,
BryceDon’t worry Mr. B. I have a cunning plan…
PowerBook 1.67 Ghz ATI 9700 128 MB 2 GB
Final Cut Pro HD
DVD Studio Pro 3
Motion -
thanks man. after IT blocked the macs from our
PC network (security concerns) we were resorted
to using flash drives and such. I just used this
to connect 4 different G5s to PCs setting next to
them and it works great. Much faster than I remember
IP connection as well.-will
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Don’t forget to tell your boss that the cost of all that high-speed connectivity was equal to…. oh…. the price of a new Intuos3 tablet. 😉
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sounds like you would fit right into our
purchasing philosophy. We have to be pretty
creative if you know what I mean.🙂
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Our solution for PC and Mac high-speed file transfers: Linksys SR2016 Gigabit switch ($300.00+-), installed new 10/100 NIC cards in the Macs and Dells ($30.00+-) and CAT 6 cable. I used the onboard gigabit cards for the gigabit switch and the 10/100 cards for WAN and Internet connectivity. Now all of our video files are transferred using the Gigabit LAN. Building this gigabit network for ten computers cost us just over $650.00 with room to grow.
We are using Rendezvous/Bonjour for small file transfers after setting the systems to use the gigabit connection first. If transferring gigabytes of data the drives are mounted.
Shawn Bockoven
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I was checking out Omnibrain.com (they make 1394 drivers & hardware) – they say that using their drivers for 1394 gives slightly faster speeds via FW400 than gigabit ethernet. Using native 1394 drivers is slightly slower, so I’m going to guess that this method (just a cable, ma) is comparable to Gbit. No doubt more than a few peers would probably kill the speeds, due to packet collisions, etc, on an unmanaged network topology. But it’s great for those of us with just a few CPU’s.
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will griffith – IT blocked the macs from our PC network (security concerns)
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Inquiring minds…
BryceDon’t worry Mr. B. I have a cunning plan…
PowerBook 1.67 Ghz ATI 9700 128 MB 2 GB
Final Cut Pro HD
DVD Studio Pro 3
Motion -
????????????????????
That was my reply as well.
I’m still trying to find
some sort of meaning in it.-will
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Personally it should be the other way around, when was the last time any of your macs had viruses?
Peter McAuley
Axyz Edit
Toronto
G5 dual 2.0
4 gigs ram
10.3.8
FCP 4.5 HD
QT 6.5.2
Kona 2 v1.1 with K Box
4 X 250 gig external F800 Lacie firewire drive
2 X 23″ Apple cinema display -
>>Personally it should be the other way around, when was the last time any of your macs had viruses?
It doesn’t matter how good our Macs are,
what matters is they are not PCs.Facts have no relevance here. Only name brands.
-will
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