Well this seems to shed some light on why the browser based ftp does not work, as Safari spawns Finder to access the ftp site:

<quote from http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107415 >

Mac OS X 10.2 or Later: Cannot Copy to FTP Servers in the Finder
You can use the Connect To Server command to connect to an FTP server in the Finder, but you will have read-only access. You cannot copy, or upload, to an FTP volume in the Finder.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server volumes available in the Finder have read-only access, even when the FTP server is set to allow you write access.

If you want to copy files from a Mac OS X computer to an FTP server, you need to use an application other than the Finder.

You can use the Terminal utility or a third-party FTP utility.
</quote - no idea why this is the case though!>

However the command line ftp from Terminal also seems to have the issue.

OIMO

From w2k command line:

230 User xxxx logged in.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list
htdocs
logs
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 14 bytes received in 0.02Seconds 0.88Kbytes/sec.

I've no idea what EPRT is all about...

Thanks, I have no idea what the ERPT bit either.

I will try and borrow a Windows laptop from work for the weekend and see if I get the same problem with that.

OIMO

Well I borrowed an XP laptop from work and it worked fine just using the ftp function in IE. All very strange. As it appears to be an Apple issue I will continue to investigate and post the findings to the thread in that forum.

cheers for all the ideas
OIMO