Never pass up a chance to sit down or relieve yourself. -old Apache saying

Friday, August 1, 2008

Link 2 Macs with FireWire or USB

Hard to believe that I am just now looking to do this: connect my two Macs via FireWire, or USB. Why is it so hard to get straight info on this?

Maybe I'm just getting old and senile, but each Mac has the same type of IEEE plug, which APPEARS to be 4-pin but in fact I THINK is a 6-pin. The Mac Users Guides simply say FireWire 400 and 800. They don't say how many fucking pins each plug has, or needs. I FINALLY found a document in MacHelp about how to connect two Macs via FireWire using "Target Disk Mode." They sure bury the info deeply. But still no mention of a 4-pin or 6-pin.


The same kind of difficulty and confusion applies to USB, fer chrissakes. I think I'm going mad. Each Mac has a USB 2.0 port. A few of them, in fact. And each has the flatter "A" type plug, as opposed to the more-square-type "B" plug. (It took quite awhile to find a document on the internet that accurately differentiated between A and B types.) But it's hard as hell finding a USB cable that has two A plugs! Argh!

I would have sworn that I, at one time, hooked both computers up via USB cables and transferred some files between them. But now I cannot find any such necessary USB A-to-A cable! Argh!!

I have an external hard drive, and I have moved files from the MacBook to the external, from the external to the iMac before, but I should be able to easily move files from the MacBook to the iMac, and my Apple network is not making it easy for me to share the computers, for some reason. Triple ARGH!!!


Here's one document I found on the net, which closely mimics what I found in MacHelp.

How to Connect Two Macs Using Firewire
I sometimes find myself needing to transfer files from one Mac to another. The simplest way I've found uses something you probably already have lying around - a single Firewire cable!
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