Connecting old Macs with the New via Ethernet?

moogsmoogs
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hi folks,



Just want to confirm something with you all before I try and help a client of mine out. They have an old Performa which they're trying to move a bunch of files from, to a new Mac. Unfortunately, they have no SCSI burner, Zip drive or other common means of transfering the files....



What I was hoping to do -- since all Macs are supposedly auto-sense capable when you plug into another Ethernet device -- was to simply network the two machines "back to back" and try to grab them from the OS X Finder.



Will this work, or do I need a bridge between them / other Ethernet box to act as the intermediary?



Short of that, do you guys know of any good external CD-R drives that support both Firewire and SCSI (guessing SCSI-2 if it's a Performa)?





Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    cosmonutcosmonut Posts: 4,872member
    If the "new Mac" was made in the last three years or so then a regular ethernet cable should do fine. The new mac will auto-sense and adjust accordingly.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    And if not, then just use a cross-over cable. $10 at Radio Shack or any other electronics store. The auto-sense just lets you eliminate having to keep two kinds of cables around.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    Thanks guys. I think the new Mac is only a few weeks old so it sounds like I should be able to just use a standard Ethernet cable. In either case, will the drives from the other machine show up in the Finder, or will I have to "Connect" via the Go menu?
  • Reply 4 of 8
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    you have to turn on file sharing on one computer (preferably the performa) and then set it to share the entire HD (in 8.5 and up I believe all you had to do was get info on the HD and go to sharing and turn it to read write for all users and copy the settings to enclosed folders) then mount the volume from the new computer using the address given in the file sharing control panel on the old mac.



    then it should mount and it will be just drag and drop.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    Just a note: The newness of the computer has nothing to do with whether to use a strait or crossover ethernet cable. If one (or both) of the ports is a gigabit port, then it has the auto-sensing, and you can use either. If neither is a gigabit port, then you need a crossover cable (or a hub/switch/router).



    And as a quick reference: All PowerMac G4's, G4 Powerbooks 15" an larger, and XServes have GigaBit. Everything else has 10/100.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    Thanks Paul and Karl, very helpful information. I think this gets me where I need to be knowledge-wise on this issue. I'll report back to this thread if anything goes wrong with that general setup....
  • Reply 7 of 8
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    Well, it turns out this person's network card was fried (that, or the thing that connects the NIC to the mobo in the Performa 6400 was fried). I can't imagine what a pain in the ass changing the hard drive in that thing would be. At any rate, I did all the things noted above and there was basically no response in Connect to Server (or the Network Browser) after repeated tweaks and restarts.



    When I tried to access TCP/IP in the Performa, it wouldn't even recognize an Ethernet port as being there.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    dowser101dowser101 Posts: 8member
    I have got an even more frustrating experience. I have a PBG4 an an old PM4400 (stuck in 9.1 forever) that the titanium totally outdated 2 years ago. Enabling appletalk and file sharing in both, i could access and regain from PB desktop all partitions of the 20 Gb HD i installed in there when the original 1,2 drove me nuts. And i had my user public folder at hand on the 4400 screen. Killer.

    That was at Jaguar time if i remember well, maybe Puma or Lynx...

    Whatever. Successive OS updates limited this access from the PB, the 4400 is not appearing anymore in the network window neither browser nor the Go menu . I didn not change any setting though... just set file sharing and appletalk back on when updating got them down to default.

    I still had my public folder to link but it finally failed as well. Now any access attempt in OS 9 selector (where the the startup partition of the PB appears as a server) results in an alert ("connection has just been interrupted" in the french localization). I m in automatic Appletalk mode, would switch to manual in one or both would help, and if yes, what to set as network and nodes???



    I tried direct IP connection as well from OS X, after setting the 4400 TCPIP panel to ethernet and giving him 127.0.0.2 as an address, no result...



    Is it that X 10.3.2 is not anymore recognizing OS 9 under the 9.2 official classic updates or what???



    EDIT:

    I must add smthg important: i m not on an Apple installed original ethernet card, not all 4400 were shipped w/one. I got a Kingston KNE110TX PCI card and the last OS 9 driver on their site is from january 2000!!!
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