I actually answered my own question in another thread, but the result is that Apple's OSX operating system doesn't handle DOS formatted disks as robustly (Apple's own words) as OS9.2 did, due to limitations of the UNIX infrastructure.

The problem is not the FAT32 formatting, you are correct.... it's that the hard drive I was trying to mount is 160GB. Apple says that anything over 128GB must be partitioned into multiple, smaller partitions in order to properly mount to the desktop.

On the other hand, I plugged the drive into a Windows laptop that is on my home network, and using OSX "connect to server" (I enabled sharing on the drive in Windows), I was able to connect to the laptop via its IP address, and mount the drive on my desktop as a server, no problem.

Actually, one problem... the ethernet network effectively cut the transfer rate of the firewire drive by about half...

Gary

ethernet = 100Mbps

Firewire = 400Mbps

So yeah unless you are running gigabit, or fiber, FW will be faster.