Firewire networking issues (XP/OSX)

[Phillip Roncoroni]

Hello.

WinXP machine:
- firewire card
- one firewire HD attached locally (shared from the root to my Mac along
with other drive shares; worked fine when I was sharing via wireless with
WEP over my router)
- firewire card configured with static IP of 192.168.9.8

MacBook Pro:
- built in firewire
- firewire configured with static IP of 192.168.9.9

Now, on the Mac as soon as I plug the two machines together, the firewire HD
connected locally to the WinXP machine shows up, because of the firewire
daisy chaining. The Mac doesn't show up at all on the XP side, I assume
because of the HFS+ file system.

On the Mac, if I connect to smb://192.168.9.8 and mount my XP shares,
everything is fine, I can transfer files at blazing speed, and I'm happy.
However, on the Windows side, it seems as long as the Mac is attached via
firewire, if I have anything else attached locally via firewire, like the
drive mentioned above, then Explorer freaks out, and has no idea what to do,
essentially freezing, and giving MFT write delay errors for that external
drive.

Is there a way around this? I'd like to be able to have my locally attached
firewire drives on my XP box to be accessible while my Mac is.

In addition, it seems if I have the MacBook Pro attached via firewire when
the XP machine boots, it hangs at the XP startup logo with the status bar
moving, until the second I remove the firewire connection, and then it
continues.

Thanks in advance.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 06:52:03 GMT, "Phillip Roncoroni"

WinXP machine:
- firewire card
- one firewire HD attached locally (shared from the root to my Mac along
with other drive shares; worked fine when I was sharing via wireless with
WEP over my router)
- firewire card configured with static IP of 192.168.9.8

I would strongly advise full-sharing the whole of C:\ (including the
hidden admin shares) due to the risk of malware being dropped directly
into the system from anything that is on your (unbounded) WiFi. WEP
can be auto-cracked in minutes from anyone within WiFi range.

MacBook Pro:
- built in firewire
- firewire configured with static IP of 192.168.9.9

Now, on the Mac as soon as I plug the two machines together, the firewire HD
connected locally to the WinXP machine shows up, because of the firewire
daisy chaining. The Mac doesn't show up at all on the XP side, I assume
because of the HFS+ file system.

You are networking the computers together, not the drives - so it is
the drives' native computer that reads the drives, and therefore the
specifics of the file systems will not be a factor in this.

It would be quite different if you unplugged a Firewire HD from the
one computer and connected it directly to the other!

OTOH, all sorts of password and user permissions issues may apply, as
will firewall settings etc. Suspect this if you can PING each other
just fine, but the file sharing doesn't work.

On the Mac, if I connect to smb://192.168.9.8 and mount my XP shares,
everything is fine, I can transfer files at blazing speed, and I'm happy.
However, on the Windows side, it seems as long as the Mac is attached via
firewire, if I have anything else attached locally via firewire, like the
drive mentioned above, then Explorer freaks out, and has no idea what to do,
essentially freezing, and giving MFT write delay errors for that external
drive.

Wow, that is VERY nasty. It's either a logic error, such as confusion
between Firewire networking and direct HD traffic, or it could be
something power-related that de-stabalizes the hardware, or something
else that is peculiar to Firewire itself.

If it were a generic drive-vs.-network logic error within XP (or
MacOS) then I'd expect it to have come up and been fixed by now. I
haven't heard of anything like that on the XP side, so I'd check
whether anything like that is known to have been fixed in MacOS?

What are your computers' power supplies like?
Is all the Firewire cabling within spec?

In addition, it seems if I have the MacBook Pro attached via firewire when
the XP machine boots, it hangs at the XP startup logo with the status bar
moving, until the second I remove the firewire connection, and then it
continues.

Sounds like it might be polling the Mac as if it were a device, and
awaiting a response that never comes...

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