[NobleMatt]

hey, my MBP is due any day now and obv im gonna need to do some file shifting back and forth over the forthcoming months (and years hopefully lol) I guess the best way of doing it is going to be firewire, but i have no idea about firewire, only ever used it one or twice years ago, im aware there is 2 types of firewire (800 and 400) and by google image search have worked out they have different connectors and from the guess my imac has FW400 and MBP is listed as having FW800, are they cross compatible? and do i just need to FW800 to FW400 cable and thats it?

Matt

[Simon]

What kind of iMac do you have? Since the 24" C2D iMac all have come with FW800.

FW800 is backward compatible with FW400. Get a $4 FW800-FW400 cable and you're all set. Migration Assistant works all by itself over FW. If you want to do file sharing over FW Mac Help will tell you how. Search for IP over FireWire.

Obviously you can also transfer files over wifi or Gigabit.

[NobleMatt]

i have the 20" with the 400 im guessing?

whats going to the easiest way or connecting one to the other on a day to day basis (im not worrid about speed cause most of the files once migrated that will be going back and forth will be illustrator files (pretty small) and also just thought, cant do it over ethernet cause thats currently being used to connect my xbox to the internet

[msuper69]

Originally Posted by crazyreaper 

i have the 20" with the 400 im guessing?

whats going to the easiest way or connecting one to the other on a day to day basis (im not worrid about speed cause most of the files once migrated that will be going back and forth will be illustrator files (pretty small) and also just thought, cant do it over ethernet cause thats currently being used to connect my xbox to the internet

Umm, there is this thing called a local area network that you can use to connect computers to each other with a router.

Just because your Xbox is connected to the Internet doesn't mean squat.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by crazyreaper 

whats going to the easiest way or connecting one to the other on a day to day basis

wireless.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by crazyreaper 

i have the 20" with the 400 im guessing?

Recent 20" iMacs also have FW800.

See for yourself
/Applications/Utilities/System Profiler > Hardware > FireWire

whats going to the easiest way or connecting one to the other on a day to day basis (im not worrid about speed cause most of the files once migrated that will be going back and forth will be illustrator files (pretty small) and also just thought, cant do it over ethernet cause thats currently being used to connect my xbox to the internet

Wifi and Ethernet are both easy.

[NobleMatt]

Originally Posted by msuper69 

Umm, there is this thing called a local area network that you can use to connect computers to each other with a router.

Just because your Xbox is connected to the Internet doesn't mean squat.

no need for the sarcasm tbh, if u wanna be helpful then be that, if not keep quiet
and my xbox does matter because it connects to the internet through my imac as i aint shelling out for a wireless adapter for it when i can do it for free as they are sat next to each other and im not in the same room as my router, so the ethernet port is being used by my xbox so its firewire or wifi really

Originally Posted by Simon 

Recent 20" iMacs also have FW800.

See for yourself
/Applications/Utilities/System Profiler > Hardware > FireWire
Wifi and Ethernet are both easy.

it just says

Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec

i guess that means FW 400

looking on ebuyer they all seem to be named after the number of pins, so FW400 is 6 pin and FW800 is 9 pin yer? so a 6pin to 9pin would work to connect the two?

how does the laptop/imac show the imac/laptop when connected via firewire? just as a external HDD like device? is there a way i can auto connect the two to save major ball ache

[Big Mac]

It's no ball-ache. You just use a 9pin to 6pin Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 cable and restart the iMac while holding the T key. Your iMac's drive will show up on your MBP's desktop.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by crazyreaper 

it just says i guess that means FW 400

Yeah, in that case you have only FW400 (6 pins).

looking on ebuyer they all seem to be named after the number of pins, so FW400 is 6 pin and FW800 is 9 pin yer? so a 6pin to 9pin would work to connect the two?

That's right. FW800 has 9 pins, FW400 has 6 pins (or 4 if it's the unpowered 'iLink' variant).

You can get the $4 cable I linked to in my very first post to connect the two.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812189097
As I already mentioned, FW800 is backward compatible with FW400 so it's no problem.

how does the laptop/imac show the imac/laptop when connected via firewire? just as a external HDD like device? is there a way i can auto connect the two to save major ball ache

You essentially have two options. Boot one Mac in FireWire Target disk mode and connect it to the other. It will behave like an external FW disk. The other option is IP over FireWire which means you basically use FW to network the two Macs together (as you would with Ethernet or wifi) and use file sharing to mount one Mac's disk on the other.

Here are two Apple support documents explaining the details for both methods:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...5/en/8443.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...5/en/8707.html

[NobleMatt]

oopps i was unclear with that bit, that should have been on a new line with the words is over wireless in there somewhere

so yer is connecting the two over wireless so that i dont have to log into the other one each time, is that possible?

i take it the two connect over FW while booted in OS X, how does that show up? just the same?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by crazyreaper 

so yer is connecting the two over wireless so that i dont have to log into the other one each time, is that possible?

You log on to the other Mac, save the password in your keychain, and create an alias of the mounted partition. Next time you just double-click that alias and the partition will mount automatically.

i take it the two connect over FW while booted in OS X, how does that show up? just the same?

Yes, as a mounted file system. If you use FWTD it will show up like an external disk. I you use IP over FW, Ethernet, or wifi it will show up as a network share. In practice this makes no difference though. It will just be a disk in your Finder window and you'll have read/write permissions.

[NobleMatt]

ok thanks for the help, im still waiting for it to be delivered but will have a play when it gets here and i may post back if i have problems