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dogbreath2200 · Jul 27, 2003, 09:58 AM

The subject basically sums it up. I can't see any files on a Win 98 machine from the OSX machine or vice versa. The Win XP machine and OSX play nicely though. I don't know what the relevant info is so if you could walk me through the troubleshooting process I would appreciate it

Thanks in advance for your help!

ghporter · Jul 27, 2003, 09:30 PM

Windows 98 will network with just about anything, but it isn't as easy or straightforward as with XP. In order to see anything on the 98 machine, you'll have to share it explicitly. Often, you'll have to restart the 98 machine after you've set up the sharing before the shares are seen on the rest of the network.

If you aren't prompted for a username and password by the 98 machine when it starts up (unless you've done something extra to automatically log onto it), you don't have networking set up. One way to check this is to right-click on any folder; the context menu should include a "Share" item. If it doesn't, you don't have networking set up.

dogbreath2200 · Jul 28, 2003, 04:17 PM

No, we definitely have networking set up on both the 98 and XP machine. The option to share is available on the 98 machine and is set for full sharing without a password. All the PCs in the house play just fine together, but they seem to be excluding the OS X machine from their games. They can dish stuff out at the OS X machine (push files to the drives shared via samba on the OS X machine), but they won't take anything from the OS X machine (the OS X machine can't see or do anything with the PC hard drives). The PCs would let our old OS 9 machine play with them, as long as she dressed up like a PC with PC MACLAN. Anyways, I want my little PC boys and girls to be able to play with other Mac boys and girls. I Have a Dream!!! Sorry for the brief outbreak (didn't mean that as an insult to MLK jr). Any help is greatly appreciated.

dragonbong · Jul 29, 2003, 06:29 PM

i'm still working with the same prob, oddly the xp and 2000 machines connect fine with os x but not the 98, eerr stubborn bastard. Followed the exact way that you set up yours turning on the file sharing, even came up with a vxd error once too. but yah still can't get it to link.

ghporter · Jul 30, 2003, 10:43 AM

Just a thought here (I don't have a Win98 machine to play with anymore), but what protocols are associated with your 98 machine's network card? 98 doesn't always include TCP/IP by default when making a network connection, and NDIS or NetBIOS aren't the right protocols to network with a Mac.

dragonbong · Jul 30, 2003, 06:30 PM

Got it working but there seems to be a problem when putting a password for what type of access (read or full) to the files.

dogbreath2200 · Jul 30, 2003, 08:27 PM

dragonbong-how exactly did you get it working?

dragonbong · Jul 31, 2003, 03:27 AM

Yo dogbreath, well I went through control panel than network to set up file sharing (as GHporter said), there's a tab for you. You may need the win 98 cd to install some files for you and then reboot. From there I went to MyComputer, right click on the drive to put what i want the drive to be seen as (i.e. when you mount it what name will it be under), and what type of access, (full or read/only). You can put passwords there too. Also you can be more specific and click only certain folders to be able to mount, i need the whole drive so if you want more security only allow certain folders. Good luck.

dogbreath2200 · Aug 2, 2003, 06:00 PM

None of this advice really seems to address my problem. The thing is that all of the windows machines can see each other, all are using TCP/IP. Could the fact that the PC and Mac machines are on a seperate subnet wig things up? Also, the Mac machine doesn't show up in My Network Places on the PC, it shows up as mounted (is that the right term in PC's) in My Computer using samba. Would the OS X machine normally show up in My Computer or not? This is kinda preventing us from using the OS X box as our server.

aaanorton · Aug 2, 2003, 06:54 PM

Originally posted by dogbreath2200:
Could the fact that the PC and Mac machines are on a seperate subnet wig things up?

Absolutely. Why are they on different subnets?

ghporter · Aug 2, 2003, 08:07 PM

The different subnet thing could definitely cause the machines to not see each other. I'm with aaanorton-why use different subnets.

As for passwords and access levels on the Win98 shares, I used to keep the access levels at "full," and used simple-but long-passwords on internal networks. Once you enter that password on another Win98 machine that wants to use the share, it keeps it and you never have to worry about it again. I think Samba does the same thing, though you may have to tell it to remember the password.

The whole password thing is moot if you make sure your LAN is behind a good barrier, like a NAT router. This keeps the outside from being able to see what's inside, and that usually includes shares. One trick to make a Windows network share more secure is to use some protocol other than TCP/IP for filesharing. IPX is useful for that, since it isn't routable at all, and it's almost required for most older games. Does Samba speak IPX-I've never tried to set it up with IPX.

dogbreath2200 · Aug 6, 2003, 01:11 PM

ok, nevermind. turns out they aren't on different subnets--my bad. the perplexing thing is that i am able to ping the OS X machine's IP address just dandy from the XP guy, but still cant get the XP hard drives to show up on mr. os x. Full sharing is enabled on the XP machine, too. TCP/IP is installed and enabled by default on xp (i did some checking around on that), and besides that i made sure it was enabled on my xp machine--it is. pfft i hate computers sometimes.