Advanced Appleshare (AFP) Configuration in Mac OS X 10.4

I had a problem with remote AFP clients running Mac OS 8.6 being kicked off volumes they mounted from my Quicksilver 933 running OS X 10.4. For a while, I thought it was random RF screwing with the wireless network, but then I moved and the problem continued... and closer inspection revealed that the kick-off interval was actually fairly regular... about every 10 minutes. A clear sign of software trouble.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn't provide much configurability to users of OS X standard edition. So, to tweak the guts of the AFP server so it can be used to reliably serve information, you need to dig around. The configuration file you're looking for is called "com.apple.AppleFileServer.plist". Go a head, go to Spotlight and type it in... it'll come up. If you're not the Spotlight type, it's hiding in /Library/Preferences.
Opening this file with the plist Editor (double click it) will reveal an exciting list of options, the exact one I was interested in is "idleDisconnectOnOFF", the default value for this is a delightfully degenerate "Yes" or "No". Set the value to "No". Alternatively, you can set the idle disconnect time to something larger, or tweak some other setting that will make you Mac yours again, wrenching it from the clutches of the Cupertino demons.