About Bob Wood Expertise I can help in MAC networking and problems. No PC expierence, but can guide you to useful info on networking Macs and PCs, and software available for crossplatform networking.
Experience 10 years Mac expierence. 6 years tech support.
Expert: Bob Wood Date: 5/5/2007 Subject: Mac Networking - 2 G3s & 1 printer.
Question Wow thanks for helping !
My equipment is circa 1998 and I have a very low-tech understanding of these things. But here goes:
I have 2 G3 Beige Macs. One is an OS 8.5 - desktop - the other an OS 9.1 tower. I'd like to network the 2 Macs but be able to still use the one printer. The printer is an Epson Stylus 1520. The printer is presently hooked up to the 8.5 desktop. I'm also using a dial up modem on the 8.5. What should I do? I'd like to consolidate, if only to dispense with one of these monitors. I was hoping to find some kind of cable or connector that could be turned on or off. Maybe that is what Apple Talk does ?? Do they make cables that have splitter switches, like they do for TVs for alternating VCRs / aerials ?
Also, I have a fairly new G4 IMac (non-intel), and would like to know if there's a way to connect a new computer like that to my older printer (above). Is there a converting cable for that situation ?
It would be nice if there was a simple device that solved all these problems.
The reason I have so many computers is because I have artwork and writing that goes back for years and am unclear on how to move it around and still be able to get at it. Perhaps there is a book available about these upgrade and networking quandaries ?
It's really nice of you to offer your help.
Answer Hi Anastasia
Here are a couple pages that will guide you in printer and file sharing;
If you want to consolidate, you could take the hard drive out of one of the G3's and out it in the other so you would still have all the info from both machines but only have one of those needed there.
If this were me, I would buy an external Firewire hard drive enclosure. Take the hard drive out of one G3 and put it in the enclosure. Connect the enclosure to the iMac and move everything you want from that drive to save to a new folder on the iMac's drive.
Then do the same for the second G3.
When done, reformat the external drive. Have it connected to the iMac and use Disk Utility to reformat it. Then move all those files back to the Firewire drive.
Then you would only need the one computer, have all your files on the external drive and also be able to use that external drive as a backup drive for all your work.
As for the printer, the above links will describe Sharing, but I would recommend buying a new printer. They're not very expensive today, and would be compatible with the iMac.
With the iMac, I would also recommend going to OS X.
