Hi

I started to night on my upgrade project buying a gigabit ethernet card for the G4 500 Sawtooth. I now need a 10/100/1000 hub or switch and a further card to let the G3 used as a file server speedup a bit. The G3 is only 350mghz. Is it fast enough to take a gigabit card? Or would I be better to upgrade to something less ancient like a dual G4?

I am getting a broadband connection soon too so if I geta dual G4 could use that for the internet as well as for file serving.

Will I need USB2 ports on the broadband MC? Or will USB 1.1 suffice?

Thanks for your help

I have now been told the best broadband solution weill be to use ethernet not USB so the phone line goes to a router/ modem/firewalll device such as the Belkin ones, then I can connectr my gigabit switch to that and the Macs into the switch to share files on the LAN.

So have answered my own question:(

You got good advice. Ethernet is a computing standard and is the same for both MACs and Windows. Using Ethernet to connect the modem to a switch and your computer to the switch is the better way to go. You can use a USB network adapter if any machine doesn't have built in Ethernet, the adapter should connect via Ethernet to the LAN.

Hi Scott

Thanks for that.

Can I use one of those adaptors to connect an old serial/apple printer printer to the Lan too?

Is there a serial to ethernet available? Or an 8 pin mini DIn?

And if the cable/adaptor exists would it actually get the printer on the network? Or does the printer need its drivers to be installed in each computer on the network too? And does any printer on a network need some kind of circuit or software to be able to be added to the network?

I have a colour A3 Epson Stylus 1520 which has serial and Apple printer port connectors. The MAcs all have USB apart from the very old 8500 that I keep only to run the printer. If it was A4 I would dump it and buy new. But it is A3.

The old Mac works fine, but slowly. But I only use it to collect an image file from the file server for printing and as long as the image file is not too large it works.

Ideally I would like to connect that printer to a dual chip G4 with USB or firewire. Or to the LAN so all the other Macs can use it.

Is there an adaptor to permit that? Or are there other issues that will make it complicated?

I have physical space so perhaps keeping the 8500 running for that purpose is the simplest solution?

Thanks, Snowred. :)

To connect the printer directly to the LAN you need a network printer server. This can be another computer that you connect the printer to and share it or a separate device that you plug the printer into and then plug the device into your switch.

However, it may be hard to find a network server for an old serial printer. You would need to install the drivers on each PC (and that may be another gotcha, finding drivers to support modern OSes).

Hi Scott

Thanks again for the help.

I looked in the printer manual and found the ethernet card option part no. then googled the part no. and found an ebayer in US selling one. So I bought that and it has arrived. But I don't think it works properly. :(
Red and green lights flash alternately on the back of the card whenever the power is on. I downloaded the OS9 drivers off Espon's website and Epson tell me there is no driver for OSX as that is built into the system.

I installed the driver on one of the OS9 computers (it is actually a dual boot) and I am unable to select the printer via the ethernet card. When I try to select it asks me to choose from modem or printer port. The computer has neither. But there is no option for ethernet card.

In OS X it is a completely different way of selecting a printer and I am not certain I am doing that part right as I don't know OSX that well yet.
:confused:

But so far no luck with selecting the printer. There are Epson drivers there but I cannot make a connection successfully. I reinstalled that part of the OS and found it reinstalled a lot of other bits of the OS too (even though I selected only the printer drivers) and that messed up my modem settings and stuff, but I got that all sorted and still the inbuilt printer drivers don't let me access the printer.

I wonder if there are jumpers missing from the card or if I need a driver for the card too.

Epson's site doesn't say I do. The manual says if there are jumpers use them. But there were none as I bought the card second hand. Epson don't sell that part new now anyway.

The card was sold as working so I'm about to mail the sellers to see what they advise. But shipping back to US will be expensive.

Any more advice you might have will be gratefully received.

I don't have a router or gigabit switch yet... Just the 100 base hub.

But have managed to set the network so that the OSX Mac can share the HD of the OS9 laptop. With the earlier version of OS9 on the desktop it only seems able to share one of the three drives. I can work round that although it is not ideal. But the OS X refuses to share with the OS8.6 Macs!

And of course although the earlier Macs list the OS X as available to share, they won' t connect. I am sure that is all OK. You can only share from a higher system to a lower one as far as I understand.

It still leaves me a route to get data centralised, so that is all I need.

I can now start to offload data from the very old Macs and then I will be able to get rid of them and have only OS9 and OSX on the network.

the gigabit ethernet card I installed is working fine too (at 100 for now as I need that switch! ) and I have broadband up and running through the Apple firewall on the OS X partition of a dual boot Mac.

So my upgrading programme is coming together! :)