[the weatherman]

I noticed that I can't seem to make the two exist side by side. Is it really not possible to use a firewire network and ethernet at the same time.

Here is the set up, I have an MDD (with Panther) connected to a Blue and White G4 (with Jaguar) via firewire, their connection works great. I have another mac, Clamshell iBook that I need to connect to either machine every now and then to share the printer with. So I try to connect the iBook via ethernet to the MDD with Panther or the Blue and White, either PM can see the iBook but can't seem to connect. It is there on the browser in Jaguar every now and then, and it also appears on the network in the Finder in Panther but I can't connect. If the iBook connects to either of the PM or vice versa I either get a time out or can't login/authenticate, the only way I can connect to the PMs is by disabling the firewire network.

Is this really impossible, can anyone help me? The machines have manually assigned IPs and subnets, I was hoping I won't need any additional hadware to connect the three, if I can make this work. The frustrating part is there is a PC at home that I am currently trying to dispose, tried connecting it to the MDD because I needed to access floppies that was given by a client, lo and behold, Panther sees it, I log on the PC without any hassle while the firewire connection to the Blue and White was still active.

Anyway sorry for the long post, hope somebody out there have ideas to help me out short of telling me just to buy a hub and connect all three machines via ethernet.