Mac/PC local network. Cable Modem + Router. Help?

Factual Questions
1

I have an HP pavilion a250n running XP and a dual G4 running os 9.2.

We have cable broadband internet running through a D Link DI-604 router.

I want the two computers to talk to each other. I’ve set up a network bridge in XP, and run the network wizard, shared the hard drive of both computers and set sharing and permissions on the G4.

XP tries to connect to the mac, but can’t. I try to connect using appleshare and manually inputting the ip address of the XP box and I get nothing. Filesharing and Websharing are on and my username is authorized in the workgroup HOME. XP is set to access workgroup HOME.

When I click on “My Network Places” in XP, I get an option to connect to the router. It brings up a “username and password” dialog box, but nothing I try works. I get a 401 Unauthorized error in the browser.

What next? I feel like this should work… but I just can’t get them to see each other.

2

Make life easy on yourself.

Install Miramar MacLan on the PC and use AppleTalk to share files & folders between the two machines.

http://www.miramarsys.com

AppleTalk like this doesn’t even require that the boxes have valid IP addresses, let alone that you’d have to know them.
The PC doesn’t do AppleTalk right out of the box, though, so you need to add this in.

Your alternative is to use cifs (aka Samba, SMB file sharing, Windows Networking, etc) which is supported on both boxes but which requires you to enter horrid strings like

cifs://visionary-pretzel.yourisp-local-pool_.fishguts.23.94393492.whatever/path_to/sharename/

in the “Connect to Server” dialog, and it CHANGES every time you reboot or log off and back on unless you’ve got a static IP address;

or you could use FTP, which will be an easier string:

ftp://123.45.67.89/sharename

but as with cifs you’ll have to know the IP of the other box every time.

With AppleTalk, you just browse and go.

3

I’m not going to spend $200 on this, but thanks anyway.l

4

Well, then I’d go with FTP.

Under MacOS 9, you can use the freeware app NCSA Telnet to set yourself up as an FTP server – it’s a feature hidden away in the Edit menu. You assign what folder to share and for what username/password combo and/or accept anonymous FTP access. Then from the PC you use any common freeware FTP client, such as CoffeeCUP FTP to upload and download files to/from the Mac.

Going the other way…

I admit I don’t know offhand whether XP does or does not have FTP Server service built-in as OS X does; if not, you can use something like Cerberus FTP Server. And on the Mac, while good old Fetch is now shareware, you can still download and use D1FTP as a free OS 9 compatible FTP client to upload and download files to/from the PC.

5

Dual G4 sounds like a good candidate for OS X – any objection to this? SMB/SAMBA sharing works flawless for me. My PC and Macs seem to work perfectly together.

Back in pre X days, though, PC MacLAN worked perfectly for me. And this was back in the days when it came with an adapter for LocalTalk!

6

After doing a LOT of reading and futzing around with my router, I decided I have to break down and finally get OSX.

I don’t like spending money. :frowning: The Apple Store has a deal right now wherein you buy 10.3 or whichever and ILife, and get $50 back, making ILife free.

Is this a good deal?

7

Kind of off topic, but can I ask what the network bridge is doing for you? I’ve yet to see a situation where one was required, and every time someone had set one up, it was the reason they were having problems.

8

Originally I had networking set up on the PC with a network bridge. Nothing was working, so I changed it around and no longer have a network bridge.

Still not working, but it has to do with file transfer protocols and my router more than my XP setup, I suspect.