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I Thought Mac's Were Supposed to Be Easy!

Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
We are entering into a piecemeal upgrading of our local area network (LAN) which currently consists of 3 P2 Win 98SE workstations, a server running Windows NT 4 which has fallen into use as only a file server, and an iMac running system 9.1, all connected by an eight station router hub.

We are adding a, to be built, Win XP Pro AMD 3200+ workstation and a Maxtor Shared Storage 200 GB drive to totally replace the Win NT file server.

I added the Maxtor drive late last week and had no difficulty getting the three Windows workstations to see the Maxtor through Network Neighborhood and to then map it as a network drive. What I don't seem to be able to come to grips with is getting the iMac to see it.

Is there anyone among this diverse group who can walk me through getting the iMac to see the Maxtor?
 
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cdsgraphic

cdsgraphic

New Member
I can fix it... throw the mac out the window... that always fixes em'

hahaha...


but, there may be a service on the xp machine that needs to be started so the mac can see it. I can't remember that stuff anymore cause it's been years since we had any macs, and they were hooked up to an old nt4 server.
 
B

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Fred, is the iMac able to see the other Win98 and WinXP machines?

If so, then there may be an issue with how the external Maxtor drive is formatted. It's just a spitball guess, but I think NTFS formatted hard drives drives tend to connect better to other operating systems than anything formatted in FAT16 or FAT32. NTFS also has the advantage of saving files larger than 4GB in size (pretty useful if you mess with video at all).
 
Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
The way it is setup Bobby is that the various drives and partitions in the NT server show up on the Mac desktop. the Mac has never been able to see the workstations nor have the workstations ever been able to see the Mac.

For all I know, I may be trying to do something that simply will not work. But if anyone thinks they know a way, I'm all ears.
 
The Vector Doctor

The Vector Doctor

Chief Bezier Manipulator
OSX introduced much better integration with windows machines. Each new version better than the last. Older versions of the Mac require a program like Dave from Thursby software in order to network with Macs. Out of the box, OS9 does not work well if at all with Macs.

http://www.thursby.com/products/dave.html

Dave is not needed for OSX, although I'm sure it adds even more functionality if you have more complex needs than what osx offers. I have used OS10.2 - through 10.4 and all allow me to see windows shared drives.
 
P

Paul W

New Member
Mac-PC Networks

We use 3 Macs, 2 PC servers for large format printers and 4 PCs. The servers are running Windows 2000 Advanced Server (very reasonable on Ebay). We tried xp pro but the Macs will not directly network with the servers (no Mac kernel). The advanced server works great right out of the box. We also network one additional pc to the Macs we use pcmaclan with no problems. In general upgrading of OSX will improve the network performance and reduce Mac reboots, but will not fix the overall communication issues Mac to pc.
 
txsurfer

txsurfer

New Member
You first need to make sure the Mac is on the network, I am using an external HD (Buffalo) When I was looking some of them only worked with OSX, this one worked with 9 & X
 
Derf

Derf

New Member
For OS9 I would recommend "DAVE" as listed in above reply, I have used DAVE and it work well once configured.

However if you can up grade the MAC to OS 10.3 or 10.4 and you will have an easer time networking the MAC than you would a WIN98se or WinME box.

I have a WinXP, Win98, OS9 and an OSX all talking just fine using DAVE on the OS 9 box. It did take a few days to get it all working and the hardest to get to talk was the Win98 & OS9.. But it works.
 
H

HSG

Guest
I've found that since I upgraded to OS 10.4 everything works better. I haven't noticed any compatibility problems since I upgraded and am looking forward to deleting 9 permanently. However, it does take some time to learn and get used to.
 
2

2972renfro

New Member
There is an article in the Dec 05 issue of PCworld about networking Macs, PCs, and Linux - maybe of help. I'm sure the same info is online at their site.
 
RobGF

RobGF

New Member
Paul W said:
...We tried xp pro but the Macs will not directly network with the servers (no Mac kernel). The advanced server works great right out of the box...
Click to expand...

With my basic knowledge I'd second this statement. When we had an NT server we had no problems connecting to it from any OS Macintosh (9.x, 10.x). When we moved to XP servers to drive our Wasatch and Onyx RIP's we learned that the basic XP server no longer supported the AppleTalk which would certainly cause problems with Mac's running older OS's. To make things simple we installed MacLan on each of the XP boxes so any of our Mac's could connect to the win servers. As a plus, installing MacLan allowed the PC's to see a lot of Mac periferals that speak AppleTalk. It also allowed the PC's to connect to the Macs.

Rob
 
Derf

Derf

New Member
RobGF said:
With my basic knowledge I'd second this statement. When we had an NT server we had no problems connecting to it from any OS Macintosh (9.x, 10.x). When we moved to XP servers to drive our Wasatch and Onyx RIP's we learned that the basic XP server no longer supported the AppleTalk which would certainly cause problems with Mac's running older OS's. To make things simple we installed MacLan on each of the XP boxes so any of our Mac's could connect to the win servers. As a plus, installing MacLan allowed the PC's to see a lot of Mac periferals that speak AppleTalk. It also allowed the PC's to connect to the Macs.

Rob
Click to expand...

It is true that there is some advanced knowledge involved to network OS9 to a windows server however OSX is as simplistic to net work as a WinXP Pro box is to a Win Server.

Simply turn on Windows File sharing "ON" and lower the OSX fire wall and you can see Windows 2k, NT, XP, Severs all day long...
 
M

mark in tx

New Member
I am running OS 10.4 (Tiger) on a G3 iMac, it had no problem seeing the shared drives on the XP boxes,
Make sure the drives or folders are shared on the windows machines,
On the Mac, select "go" in the finder, select "servers" in the drop down menu,
select "browse", your shared drives and folders will show up, select the one you want, type in the administrator name and password and it should mount on the Mac desktop.
Then repeat the same steps for additional folders and drives.
Conversely, the shared Mac drives and folders will show up in the windows network neighborhood automagically after you connect from the Mac.
 
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