Two Macs, one Ethernet cable

[kikashi]

For several years, I've been able to connect my Pro desktop to my MacBook Pro directly by an Ethernet cable; to "see" the Pro (which has File Sharing enabled) on the laptop's list of servers ("Shared") in a Finder sidebar on the laptop; and so to mount the desktop's disk on the laptop for very quick copying of large quantities of data.

In Mountain Lion (and perhaps in Lion, which I didn't have installed for long), this no longer works: the desktop just doesn't show up in the server list. If I enable wifi on both machines, it does show up but of course the connection over wifi is much, much slower than it is over Ethernet.

I have set the Finder's preferences to show everything enabled in the sidebar.

Is this as it should be, or is there something I can enable to get it back? The alternative, of course, is to connect the laptop in firewire disk mode but that means shutting it down, which is tedious.

TIA

Jeremy

 

[bentup]

I was having the same problem with my new iMac and an ancient PB.

After restarting both, it was working again....

Found a long thread elsewhere suggesting the restart due to DHCP.

 

[The Bulge]

I was having the same problem with my new iMac and an ancient PB.

After restarting both, it was working again....

Found a long thread elsewhere suggesting the restart due to DHCP.

Older Macs require cross-over cables since their ethernet cards don't have auto-mdix. This might be an issue, but other than that directly connecting to Macs with an ethernet cable should about as hard as connecting them with firewire.