Home Forums Hardware Mac Desktops & Notebooks Another "strange" question?

I'm not sure which Forum should be "blessed" with this one, but here goes.
By accident I connected the Powerbook and MacMini with a FW cable whilst both were up and running - I was intending to do, in, using Virtual1 parlance, a FWTDM.
Obviously ( I think it is obvious ) nothing happened and I immediately set about doing the FWTDM by the correct method.
Afterwards, I got to thinking - dangerous I know - why did nothing happen in the first instance, as, if I had been connecting an external drive via the FW cable to either of the computers, it would/should have been recognised.
SO, out of curiosity I thought I would consult the oracle/s and see what I am missing - not in general, just about this topic.
Looking forward to anyones' explanations.
Thanks. Regards. Mike

I think the easy answer is that in order for FireWire target disk mode to work both devices must be powered but only one of them may be booted.

When you hook two Macs together, the only way to accomplish that is to boot one into FireWire target disk mode (which essentially makes it an external HD rather than a computer).

An external HD, on the other hand, is powered but not booted.

Actually, it's entirely possible, as of OS X 10.3, to connect two normally-booted Macs with a FireWire cable and share files between them. Such networking is called IP over Firewire. See for example Mac OS X 10.5 Help: Using IP over FireWire for a sketchy outline of how to proceed.

Circumstances permitting, that sounds like an excellent alternative to ethernet; thanks for the link.

The first sentence of your first linked doc - "All Apple computers sold today include one or more FireWire ports." - is incorrect, though, because current MacBooks do not have a FireWire port. (Have you any idea how to report that to Apple without enrolling as a developer?)

Thanks artie for your reply, which I think I actually understood. That's a tribute to your explanation.
Also, thanks "dk" for your further enlightenment.
Sorry dianne - yes, "MacDesktops & Notebooks"" does seem quite obvious now you mention it.
And finally - no, only joking, its beginning to sound like a speech at an Awards Ceremony.
Regards. Mike

You can turn on internet connection sharing for EoFW, but you have to be careful. A LOT of things don't expect that. nmap for example, crashes in flames if you try to run it over EoFW.

I used that awhile ago to get internet when visiting my parents, they had a cable modem and an imac and no router or wireless. So I used a firewire cable and got internet from their imac.