need to find a better way to share the occasional large file(s) on the job, under pressure, between a couple pbooks.
Normally I'm rigged with 2 pbooks, an ext FW HD for each and a floating FW buss powered mini.
The buss powered mini blows by todays standards; and having to mount and unmount. Stupit.
USB flash drives are OK for their size, but sometimes leave me short; and still require plugging.
So I'm thinking networked drive.
Or should I just be thinking HW network between the 2 pbooks?
Any thoughts>
Would there be a speed difference in a networked drive as compared to a network?

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!#$@@$#!

never do yesterday or today what you can put off til tomorrow or next year.

HW network between the powerbooks. Simple, cheap and fast.

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Quote
mattkime
HW network between the powerbooks. Simple, cheap and fast.

totally agree.

get a 1000bt switch and hook those PBs up

a 1 gig transfer over 1000bt should take under 50 seconds

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

I third the motion...
Even at 100-Base-T, the convenience will more than make up for a slight lack of speed vs Gigabit Ethernet.
Couple cables and a swith, 5 minutes to set up (that assumes you have trouble finding a place to plug the switch in...).

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Paul F.
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Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
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Eureka, CA

You don't even need a switch. Just a normal cat5 cable (for 100 baseT) or cat6 (for 1000 baseT). Doesn't even need to be a crossover cable. Then turn file sharing on from the system prefs. Bodda-bing.

all brands more or less the same where Macs are concerned?

wouldn't the switch be faster then just a straight cable connect?

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never do yesterday or today what you can put off til tomorrow or next year.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2006 02:50PM by Fritz.

>>Then turn file sharing on from the system prefs.

Is it that easy? I thought it might be a good idea to have a box assigning IP addresses. Hm, yeah, a router instead of a switch. Maybe I'm wrong

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I'm doing it right now with just a simple ethernet cable attached between two 1000 bastT Macs going through file sharing.

and that will allow the admin access to ext drive too, correct?

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!#$@@$#!

never do yesterday or today what you can put off til tomorrow or next year.

Yup.

there are very few 1000bt routers

straight cable would be fine, provided theres nothing else you want to network

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

How far apart are the machines? I don't know if it would actually be any faster than Ethernet, but I/P over FireWire networking is available in Panther and Tiger.

[www.lifehacker.com] describes networking a PC and a Mac. Configuring two Macs is similar but easier.

One day I tried it. Unhooked the camera end of my iSight's cable and plugged it into my wife's PB. It worked quite well and was fast. Longer cables can be found for cheap if needed -- [www.pcmicrostore.com] for example.

For easy future use I went to the Network pref pane in both PBs, chose 'Network Port Configurations' and dragged 'Built-in FireWire' to the top of the list. This makes the machine look for a FireWire network before any others. (It searches in the order listed.) When I don't have a FW cable connected, it skips it and looks to #2 in the list (in my case Built-in Ethernet). If there's no Ethernet cable connected, it goes to #3 (AirPort, which is usually what we use).

I/P over FireWire is theoretically capable of 400Mbps or 800Mbps, depending on which flavor your machine contains. In any case, it's real quick. You can also use it for Internet sharing -- [www.macdevcenter.com] -- if desired.

Hope that's clear and perhaps useful.

With two Macs, yea, all you need is a Cat5e or Cat6 cable.

If you plan on adding any more Macs, then get a router. Since most Macs have 1000BaseT these days, get a router that supports it.

[www.buy.com]

5 port for $30

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"he is going to start WW3!!!!"

FW ports are busy with ext drives. I can';t imagine you could have drives and IP going at the same time without some sort of comms mess, but I'll test at the office next week.

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!#$@@$#!

never do yesterday or today what you can put off til tomorrow or next year.