max wrote:
Adalbert Prokop wrote:
max wrote on Sunday 13 January 2008:
It sounds like what he wants is to connect two computers together with
a cable and have them treat one another like flash drives.
I'm aware of it. :) And in my last paragraph I tried to point out how
difficult that would be even in theory. Of course it is theoretically
possible, but I never heard of something like this. YMMV. :)
I don't see why it should be difficult but I have to admit I have not
tried such a thing. What's the difference between mounting an IPOD via
usb and another computer?
The IPOD knows how to act as a usb mass-storage device and the computer
doesn't.
I don't see that it is that different. The
computers have the advantage of knowing each others language, so to
speak, I could see the benefit in communicating this way between
machines and sharing a single network interface or simply plugging to
machines together to distribute a compiling job.
There are two problems - one is that usb is a host/target interface
(unlike firewire) so you can't connect computer<->computer directly
without some intermediate electronics. The other is that you need
appropriate software to act as a target. The cables that look like back
to back usb-ethernet adapters work around both of these issues.
By contrast, firewire does work host<->host and Mac computers always
have firewire-target software in their firmware so if you boot while
holding a certain key combination, another connected machine will see it
as a firewire drive. And OS X has always included 'migration assistant'
software so when you get a new machine, you just firewire-connect your
previous one and it will automatically pull over your existing users,
data and applications for you.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
