A Firewire Trick You Might Not Know...

[Jason Dunn]

If you're more familiar with USB than Firewire, here's something you might not know: many Firewire peripherals, specifically external hard drives, usually have two Firewire ports. This is because Firewire devices were designed to be daisy-chained together. Most PC owners haven't experienced this approach unless they remember the SCSI days. It's a clever idea, because it means you can connect an almost endless series of devices together, all without having to run back to the home source (such as a hub). Now here's the cool part: you can have multiple computers share the same hardware over Firewire by connecting both PCs to the same hardware.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/API800w.jpg" /> <br /><br />Here's what I do: I have my LiteOn 8x DVD burner in an external <a href="http://www.adstech.com/products/PYRO1394DriveKit/intro/API800intro.asp?pid=API-800">ADS Tech Firewire</a> drive enclosure. On the back it has two Firewire ports. One port is connected to my main desktop computer, and the other is connected to a Firewire cable that I've attached to the back of my desk using Velcro. When I need to burn DVDs with my laptop, I just plug in the Firewire cable and voilà! Instant access to my burner. Both computers can recognize and control the DVD burner without conflict (you obviously can't burn data from both computers at the same time though). This allows me the flexibility of having a DVD burner that any Firewire-equipped computer can access, without the restriction of having to put the DVD burner inside one computer.

[Filip Norrgard]

Cool trick Jason: playing with fire(wire)... ;)

Now, why doesn't my PC and iMac have Firewire? :x I can surely add IEEE 1394 to my PC, but no can do with the old iMac, or? Oh well, better forget that until buying a new one... perhaps... :roll:

[dean_shan]

Another Firewire tip. If you have a Mac restart your computer and hold down 'T'. Once the Firewire logo apears on your screen you have now turned your mac into a very expensive Firewire Hard-Drive. This comes in handy when you need to transfer large files (ie video) between computers.

[Jason Dunn]

Once the Firewire logo apears on your screen you have now turned your mac into a very expensive Firewire Hard-Drive.

Cool! So it turns the Mac into a storage device when connected via Firewire? Because Firewire can already be used for networking purposes (although I've never done it myself).

[dean_shan]

Yeah it just turns it into a storage device.

[klinux]

That boot to firewire feature is extremely useful when doing backups (or when one messed with the OS so hard that it does not boot up - which of course never happened to me).

Firewire really is a superior technology to USB2 and it is a shame that it is not more widespread than it currently is. I sync my iPod to a daisy-chained external harddrive which contains my music library (since my iBook has only 20GB of storage space, same as my iPod) and never have any problems.

[Mojo Jojo]

There is another neat trick for the iPod other then storage, you can make it the boot system as well for 9.x to 10.2 (10.3 with some work) as well.

What does that mean exactly? You can install OS X on the left over space of the iPod and install all your apps there. This way you can take your iPod to an Apple computer lounge and turn any firewire enabled Apple into a dumb terminal (keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc) and use your own OS, Apps, and keep all your settings the way you like.

There has been talk (and actual confirmation but mum on release date from Apple) that future versions of OS X (10.3.5) will have a feature called 'Home on iPod' that when the device is connected you can 'login' and take over the machine without rebooting.

Anyways... some neat things with Firewire.

[Jason Dunn]

What does that mean exactly? You can install OS X on the left over space of the iPod and install all your apps there. This way you can take your iPod to an Apple computer lounge and turn any firewire enabled Apple into a dumb terminal (keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc) and use your own OS, Apps, and keep all your settings the way you like.

Man, that's totally sweet. 8O

[foldedspace]

Yup. I've used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable OS partition on my iPod. The Apple guys tried to tell me you couldn't boot off of the newer ones, but I had no trouble. CCC is free, btw. And you can make an image and burn it off to DVD, I suppose. I was just playing around with it, so I can't say that for sure. I did boot another iMac off my iPod no trouble....kinda nice for troubleshooting.

[gry]

Is this the Apple community's grass roots attempt at making thr iPod into a uPC or modular computing?

Can you folks give links to sites with these projects?

Using an iPod to boot a MAC is very interesting and looks a lot like the Antelope technology.
http://www.antelopetech.com/en/Index.aspx