Networking a Mac and PC to share audio files Options

Is there an easy way to share files between a Mac and a PC. I picked up a Hub, but I can't figure out how to set up file sharing between the two. I basically want to be able to do production on the Mac and burn the final product on the PC as well as sample on the PC and transfer to the Mac for production. Right now I am using a free internet file storage site, my cd burner, and a 128mb smart media reader/writer to do the swapping. I would much rather drag and drop.

Thank,
Rick

Do you already have a local network set up?

Are they already both online somehow?

No I bought the hub for the sole purpose of connecting the two. I do however share a cable modem between them by switching the cable back and forth... Yeah I know it's kinda ghetto. I prolly shoulda picked up a router.

[Francois Déchery]

Window File sharing and AppleShare File Sharing can't directly talk to each other:
You need to have a client software on one of the two machine:

- On windows there's a soft called PC MacLan (enable the PC to see the appleshare network)
- on Mac there's Dave (enable the Mac to see the Windows file sharing)
- on linux, there's Netatalk which talk to Appleshare and Samba which talk to Windows file sharing....

FOr your cable-modem, you should REALLY buy a router: its cheap, really easy to install (buy a netgear for example), really more convenient, and it secure your connection to the net, plus add lot of cool features....

BTW there is also a cool FREE utility, VNC, which can be used to remotly control any other computer on the network (LAN or WAN), whatever it's a PC, a mac or a linux OS It can be cool if the computers are not in the same room or if you want to access your machine, remotly, from anywhere in the world (it can even work on a simple net browser)

HTH

[somaestudios]

Hi Rockafeller,

I have 2 iBooks and a Pentium III machine on a LAN working perfectly without any additional software.All i have is an 8 port switch ( about $30 ).If you want i can send you the instructions on how to set it up.
To share the internet connection you need to buy a router.
Regards,

Somaestudios

[swilder]

Rick, what OS is your windows PC?

That makes a difference in how you share files.

Scott

[dixiechicken]

If you have your PC properly setup with an ethernet network card
TCP/IP-protocol and a workgroup or domain defined!

Right-klick a folder on your PC & choose properties,klick the Share-tab and share the folder to some proper user - (yourself) - & name it.

Simply connect your Mac to the same TCP/IP-segment but use different ip-number.
Press CMD-K in Mac OS-X and enter the following info

\\PC-IP-number\shared-folder-name
Hit return
You should get the log-on dialog
Enter:
Your-Username
Your-Passwd
Your-Workgroup/Your-Domain

Hit enter! Thats it!

The trick here is set up the TCP/IP segment properly.
If you have only one IP-number from your ISP-Provider, you will probaly
have to buy a router, that is capable of:
A) accepting the ip-number provided by your ISP-provider
(external computers on the internet will see this)
B) Give out 2 ip-number to your internal segment
( most likely from the private segment-range 192.168.xxx.xxx)
In this case both your Mac and PC can be configured to use DHCP
to catch the ip-numbers given out by the router.

If you have gotten 2 ip-numbers from your ISP-provider, but have only one
networking socket in your condo, you will get by with a hub.
------------------------------------------------------------
I OS-9 you must keep passwd:s down to 8-chars of length.
And things will be much simpler if you run Win2K-server as OS on your PC.
And install SFM--services in the win2k environment.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Cheers: Dixiechicken

[Francois Déchery]

Hi Rockafeller,

I have 2 iBooks and a Pentium III machine on a LAN working perfectly without any additional software.

My answer was related to OS9 networking.

Now under OSX it is pretty easyer because all network clients (Windows and Unix) are included in OS X

To add some extra notes to the excellent infos posted by dixiechicken, here is how to configure your IPs address:
Let say you have a DSL connection, a router a pc and a mac

Router Get a dynamic IP address from the DSL provider (WAN connection)
Router must also have an internal adress, put
IP: 192.168.0.0
Netmask: 255.255.255.0

Your DSL login/pass will be setup once in the router.

# PC TCP/IP setup:
IP: 192.168.0.1
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Router: 192.168.0.0
DNS servers (the one provided by your ISP)

# Mac TCP/IP setup (Preferences/network/ethernet)
Configure: Manually
IP: 192.168.0.2
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Router: 192.168.0.0
DNS servers (the one provided by your ISP)

if you add another machine add 192.168.0.3 and so on...

Another easyest way to do it, is to configure your router as a dhcp server (usually the default setting) and teach the mac and PC to be configured to use it (in the mac, switch "Configure" to "using DHCP").

This way, the router will automatically assign the IP address, the router adress, and the DNS address to each computers. The drawback is that you can never predict what IP your machine will get, and so you wont be able to have alias of other machines, or static routes programmed in the router (ie to redirect some servers ports, often used in games or such)

Please note that you should absolutely use IP in the form of 192.168.x.x. (or 10.0.x.x)

HTH