Computer Tips

I wrote an email to a bloke called Simon and tried to explain how to network a Mac and a PC together. This is one of those things that is in fact easier to do than to explain, but it isn’t a straightforward process by any measure.

The email I wrote relied on there being a router involved and both machines connected to it, receiving DHCP addresses from it. The instructions on doing this bit are usually included with your router and would probably be part of the initial set up that you go through. From there you need to follow the steps here to get it all running.

I am using Mac OSX 10.4.x and Win XP Pro, but it works the same with Win XP Home. This is what I said:

Part 1

OK – if you have OSX 10.2 or above this is going to be a piece of cake. Without going into the detail too much, when you network two computers they need to be in the same ‘group’. By default, a MacOSX machine is placed into a group called ‘workgroup’. However, a Windows machine by default is in a group usually called MSHOME. You can choose to change either or both to be the same.

In Windows (XP), click on control panel, then System. In the box, click the tab for computer name, then look for the button to ‘Change’ it. In there you can type ‘workgroup’ for the group – it will only go in as capitals. You will need to re-start the machine to apply the changes.

Or, in Mac, open your applications/utilities folder and start up ‘Directory Access’. You will need to authenticate – click on the lock and type your password. In the list of services highlight the one with ‘SMB/CIFS’ and then click on ‘Configure…’ – you can now type in the name for the workgroup that you want. You won’t need to re-start!

Personally, I leave the Mac as Workgroup and change the PC to be the same. With luck this is all that you’ll have to do… apart from set up a shared folder. For lots of reasons I only ever share a folder on a PC, not the entire drive. Create a folder, name it and right click on it. In properties, set up the share name there. On the Mac, go into the System prefs and under ‘Sharing’ click on ‘Windows Sharing’. The Mac will tell you the path that other users can use to get to your machine, so make a note of it – it will be something like \\192.168.1.10\username.

Part 2

The next step is to make sure that you can ‘see’ the PC from the mac and vice versa. Ensure that your network cables are connected to your router and that both machines have Internet access – open a browser and check a search in Google, for example. If you have set the router up properly this should be straight forward, and the router should be supplying ‘DHCP’ info for both the PC and the Mac.

You need to know what the IP address is for the PC – you can get this usually from the router’s internal info or from the PC itself. Depending on the router, log in (could be 192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.1 as the address to log in to the router – type this into Safari or Firefox), and look for the ‘DHCP assigned routing table’. In there you will see what each machine connected to the router has been assigned. If you prefer to use the PC, go to the start button and then click on ‘Run’ and type in ‘cmd’ – this starts up the command line prompt in a window. Once there, type ‘ipconfig’ and you should see the IP address that the PC has been assigned.

If that all works, on the Mac go into applications/utilities and start up the Network Utility. Click on ‘Ping’ and type in the IP address for the PC. If all is well, the Ping will start and you should get ten results under 1ms. You can do the same to the Mac from the PC – go into the command line again and type ‘Ping’ and the IP address for the Mac…

If you can ping both machines successfully, there is no reason why you can’t now mount the shared volumes with ease.

Part 3

On the Mac, open a finder window and on the top left click on the ‘network’ icon and browse to ‘servers’ – you should see the PC listed there – click on it and click ‘connect’. You will be prompted for a user name and password – the username is typically the name of the account you created in win XP. If you use a password, type it there. The list of available shared volumes will appear, click the one you want. If there is only one it may not give you the option, so check to see if a network icon appears on your desktop. If you arrange the desktop view by name it will appear under the hard drive icon in the top right of the screen.

That is full access to the PC shared folder, and you can simply drag and drop stuff into there or from there.

On the PC the Mac should now appear in the Network places. You could click on the ‘Show Workgroup’ icon and browse for it if not. However, if you can’t find it, you may need to ‘Add a network place’. To do this you’ll need the info you noted down earlier when prompted by the wizard. This will then give you an icon in the ‘My Computer’ area which will link to the Mac and will be called something like ‘username on MacOSX (computername or share name), so for me it is ‘Hal on Mac OSX (Jumbo).

Again, you’ll need your Mac OSX username and password (the one you use for admin stuff, like installing apps), and then the mac folders will appear for you… simply drag and drop files to and from whatever folder you need.

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After that I guess it is time to open up any bottle of something nice to drink that you have got lying around. I would think I might have missed some bits and pieces out, so feel free to let me know if I have.

I first got an ADSL broadband connection in August 2001 and was pleased to receive a green frog type Alcatel ‘speedtouch’ USB modem. This was going to be the answer to my prayers, but soon turned into a bit of a nightmare.

I use a Mac G4 desktop computer and a PC, both of which (naturally) have USB ports and both I wanted to connect to the Internet. Back in 2001 I was working in OS9, even though OSX was just about available. With OS9 I had a chance of setting up the connection for the speedtouch modem and using the mac as a gateway – sharing the internet connection with other machines on the network.

Hah! Network! That brings a wry smile. In 2001 OS9 didn’t actually talk with Windows, and to pass files around needed you to either FTP them across or use a third party piece of software such as ‘PCMacLan’ or ‘Dave’.

To cut a long story short, the Speedtouch drivers didn’t work with OSX, but were fine with the PC. They were, at best, iffy with OS9. Since the modem has a USB connection to join it to the computer there was no way to actually get a router involved, until Vigor released the ‘2200USB’ router. This had two USB ports and was designed for just this kind of situation. Glorious! At last I could use a simple ethernet wire between the router and the different machines, rely on DHCP for the addresses and not have to concern myself with the sharing of the connection – the router handled all of it. What a great piece of kit!

Over time my needs grew and I discovered the joys of wireless networking – I added a G4 Powerbook to the line up of gadgetry, since this had been supplied by work. Of course, the Vigor router doesn’t have a wireless access point, so off I went, cash at the ready, to buy a WAP… I settled on a charming little ‘Netgear’ number. Despite needing a PC to set it up, it was a good deal cheaper than the Apple ‘Airport Basestation’ option. Within a very short time I had a fully working mixed platform network.

I could also now move over fully to OSX and did so with relish! OSX enabled me to ‘talk’ to the PC and at long last, some resemblence of file sharing appeared.

And so it stayed for several years. Occasional firmware updates arrived from Draytek for the Vigor 2200USB and all has been well.

All well, that is, until I noticed that there was an unusual computer listed as having a DHCP address in my Router’s management set up. Hmmm… could it possibly be that someone has detected my WAP and found a way in? Easy enough to do, of course – I didn’t have a password protected network! So, I decided the time was right to upgrade the firmware once more and set about password protecting the network.

And that’s when the troubles began. The latest firmware update seemed to kill the USB ports on the back of my beloved Vigor router. I took the speedtouch modem and connected it directly to the computer and it worked, but not a single thing happened when connected to the router itself. Had I somehow fried the ports? Sigh.

So – thinking that I had too many plugs in too many sockets, and more than enough wiring which was beginning to make spaghetti look neat, I decided to buy a new router with a built in WAP. I chose the D-Link G604T.

Installing it was a breeze – it needed just a couple of settings via a browser on the mac and I was up and runing – the wireless network was humming along at the improved speed of 802.11g (54Mbps) and all semed well. Time to turn on the PC and make sure that wors, too… but it didn’t. The PC couldn’t connect out to the web at all, and strangely it stopped the macs connecting via a web browser as well. On the macs, iChat worked fine and even the internal mail client, First Class, continued as usual… just no web browing. To get it back I had to keep re-setting the router, so I knew this couldn’t be right. I called tech support, who were, to be fair, very helpful. However, try as we might it was just not going to work, so I took the router back to PC World from whence it came, and exchanged it for an identical one.

Sadly this too was no use – I was ��80 down and no nearer finding a solution – D-Link kept telling me their routers were fine, and I was finding that not to be the case. I went into work the next day, rather than work from home, and decided to find an alternative router.

I found the Linksys WAG54G. Perhaps not as pretty as the D-Link model – plus it wasn’t a space saving ‘upright’ model, but right out of the box, with the bare minimum of fuss it was up and running as robustly as you can want. And the PC was fine too – I diodn’t change any settings, it all just worked. Now that’s what a router set up should be like, in my opinion! Three cheers for Cisco!

By now, of course, I had contacted Draytek to ask why the firmware had caused this, and so far I haven’t found out. A couple of emails later – asking me to re-apply the upgrade – and I am still no nearer resolving it. Draytek so seem a good and helpful bunch of folk, mind you, and the product worked flawlessly for nearly four years – always on, always no trouble at all. If I have to return it to get it fixed then I will – it would be handy to have around ‘just in case’, but until then I am over the moon with the Linksys router. Less wires, less hassle, less plugs in sockets, so over all less stress.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oh! And PC World in all this? They couldn’t have been nicer. The first time I went back on the advice of D-Link and they exchanged the unit right away. A day later I returned the new unit (again after talking with D-Link) but this time asked for a refund. There it was, seconds later, back in the bank where it should have been all along. I normally give PC world a panning whenever I can, but on this occasion they were great.