mac and PC networking

squirrel1970 · 12-12-2006, 22:54

Well, we got ourselves a mac mini... and now, we're sort of stuck... we have the LAN set up between the 2 pc's, but nothing between one mac and one pc... (we're not blessed with plug sockets for everything to be running at the same time.. story of my life lol)

So, what do we need to do to get the mac and pc to say 'hey, we can fileshare!'

It's not essentially important, but if it stops the exceptionally slow connectivity between the two, then one of us will be somewhat happier

mac mini is a G4 running OSX tiger and er... mine is a joke.. 700mhz celery running XP pro.......

toots66 · 13-12-2006, 10:06

Have you gone into System Prefernces -> Sharing on the Mac and turned on Windows Sharing? When you do that, it will tell you the Windows networking address to connect to from the PC.

I find that connecting to the Mac from Windows is far more reliable than doing it the other way. However, you can do it with Command K in the Finder (Connect to Server) using something like:

smb://workgroup;username:password@address/sharename

dragon · 13-12-2006, 18:21

You dont need to go as far as that, usally if its a small network smb://address is sufficent and then it will prompt for a user/password and list any available shares.

squirrel1970 · 14-12-2006, 18:55

hmm.. tried all that...
File sharing is... just not happening! The average send speed (via msn) is sub-dial-up speed at best.
Now usually, we'd be file sharing around ircnet (mirc/ircle) and where my OH has no probs sending and recieving stuff, I can recieve but can't send!
We're still coming to terms with the mac and how it operates (I'm seriously missing all the mousey things like a scroll wheel and a right click..)

We've checked the router and all seems ok... (tis a linksys wired router jobby)

er.. help?!

Stuart · 14-12-2006, 19:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by cj_abi

hmm.. tried all that...
File sharing is... just not happening! The average send speed (via msn) is sub-dial-up speed at best.
Now usually, we'd be file sharing around ircnet (mirc/ircle) and where my OH has no probs sending and recieving stuff, I can recieve but can't send!
We're still coming to terms with the mac and how it operates (I'm seriously missing all the mousey things like a scroll wheel and a right click..)

We've checked the router and all seems ok... (tis a linksys wired router jobby)

er.. help?!

Are you running any firewalls? If so, temporarily shut them down and try file sharing again.

Also, Mac OSX does do right mouse clicks. If you have a PC mouse attached via USB to the Mac, it will operate the same way as on a PC. Some Apple mice have a tiny roller on the top, in the middle. If yours does, then you can right click with the mouse. Just tap the right hand side (make sure you aren't touching the left though).

Either way, pressing "control" (or "CTRL") on the keyboard and left clicking has the same effect.

dragon · 15-12-2006, 18:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by cj_abi

hmm.. tried all that...
File sharing is... just not happening! The average send speed (via msn) is sub-dial-up speed at best.

Thats likely to be a firewall issue, or one of the MSN clients telling the other one the external ip address, the 1st msn client then cannot connect directly to the 2nd becuase the router doesn't know what to do about it, (its trying to route a request to itself more or less) so a direct connection fails. As fallback MSN will then relay via the MSN servers, which are somewhat slow for filetransfers (not to mention the fact its going out over the internet and then coming back in)

When sending on IRC don't you effectively create a server for the other person to connect to you and then send the file accross, Unless you forward the required DCC ports on your router or your application uses UPNP to map them itself (the app and the router would both have to support UPNP, most routers do but a lot of apps don't neccecerily)

Otherwise when the other person trys to connect to you to get the file your router doesn't know what to do with the incomming connection attempt so just drops it...

Btw if you want to check to see if the osx firewall is turned on its under system prefs > sharing.

If you cannot get windows sharing working (i've never thought it to be that great tbh) you can enable FTP under sharing on the mac and then connect to it by putting hte Mac's ip address into your ftp client on your pc.

squirrel1970 · 18-12-2006, 20:23

Not exactly running a firewall here.. I killed ZA when we got the router...
(and to be honest, it was slowing my pc down some...)

And as far as I'm aware, there are no other firewalls running anywhere else... not too sure about the mac as I'm more mac n00b than I dare care to admit to.

I know my own windows firewall is off... thats caused problems in the past but everything runs so much sweeter with it off.. and it's staying off...

So.. would it be something to do with the router settings at all? or have I completely missed something here?

punky · 18-12-2006, 20:52

OSX does have a built in firewall... Go to System Preferences -> Sharing -> Firewall.