Everything about Airports(the internet kind)
I have alota questions, so bear with me.
All the sources I have found about airports, are confusing, and I can't figure out much about it. Here's my Problem, Currently My family has one Pc plugged into roadrunner, and it works and has highspeed interent yay. The other pc is still using a 56 K modem, on AT&T. Our first Macintosh is coming soon. Would it work to plug the cable that goes into the back of PC1, into the airportbasestation, then Tada? I can then Configure the basestation from the iMac, that has an airport card? I assume I have to do something to the PC's too to get them to do the airport thing. What do I need to buy to make the airport work for both the PC's? Will a cross platform not work in my house?, i really would not be suprised. One PC is a seriosly messed up one, that I built myself. It has a video card and sound card that "share IRQ's" according to techyfriend and that makes in crash and **** up all the time. Its not very stable. . . should a even risk trying to do anything to it? The other PC is a stable dell from '98 pentium 3so on so forth.
I don't really know much technical lingo, or anything about Airport, so pretend your explaining this to your grandmother or something. Thanks
All the sources I have found about airports, are confusing, and I can't figure out much about it. Here's my Problem, Currently My family has one Pc plugged into roadrunner, and it works and has highspeed interent yay. The other pc is still using a 56 K modem, on AT&T. Our first Macintosh is coming soon. Would it work to plug the cable that goes into the back of PC1, into the airportbasestation, then Tada? I can then Configure the basestation from the iMac, that has an airport card? I assume I have to do something to the PC's too to get them to do the airport thing. What do I need to buy to make the airport work for both the PC's? Will a cross platform not work in my house?, i really would not be suprised. One PC is a seriosly messed up one, that I built myself. It has a video card and sound card that "share IRQ's" according to techyfriend and that makes in crash and **** up all the time. Its not very stable. . . should a even risk trying to do anything to it? The other PC is a stable dell from '98 pentium 3so on so forth.
I don't really know much technical lingo, or anything about Airport, so pretend your explaining this to your grandmother or something. Thanks
Comments
The new Airport base stations have an Ethernet-out port on the back, which should allow you to connect your PC. Just plug the Ethernet cable coming out of your Roadrunner into the base station, then connect your base station to the PC.
Then you could use your Mac (assuming it has an Airport card) to connect wirelessly and configure the base station. Make sure the PC is set for DHCP configuration and cross your fingers.
Most 802.11b (or "WiFi") cards should be able to connect with an Airport. For example, I have a Dell laptop (don't ask) with a Cisco Aironet card that works fine with Airport base stations. Encryption seems to complicate this, however, so at least at first I would try to get everything working with encryption off. If that works, then you can try turning it on later.
Good luck!
Get the airport basestation, plug it into your broadband connection.
Get wireless cards from whatever vendor you choose and put them in your PCs.
It should now be working.
Wireless uses a standard (currently 802.11b) and the platform running the devices (mac, pc, whatever) doesn't matter so long as the devices comply with the 802.11b standard, which all devices do, including airport cards and 3com wireless or any other brand you can think of.
If you want to, as mentioned in the above post, you can run a physical connection to the PC.
Platforms aren't really an issue when it comes to networking. Networking equipment is designed to work cross-platform and does so quite well.
Hopefully this made sense
To put the road runner into the base station and also plug it into the faulty PC(would probly be simpler then trying do wireless with the junky thing) would I need a new cable cord? is this something i can get at a best buy? this would go between the base station and the PC i suppose. Would it actually work better to buy wireless 'cards' To put in both the PC's?
Ask for an "Ethernet cable." (Or look for RJ-45 on the package.)
You mentioned BestBuy. <a href="http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11009450&m=887&cat=540&scat=1578"; target="_blank">This cable</a> should do the trick.
[ 08-20-2002: Message edited by: PestoBreath ]</p>