Messages

1

2003 / Cable modem and four computers

« on: November 07, 2003, 03:35:39 PM »

You folks not only welcomed me, you may have solved my problem with your excellent information.  A sincere thank you !

Up until now we had NO high speed internet available in this neighborhood except via Direcway (satellite).  I was not impressed with the cost to performance ratio when everything was added up.

DSL has been promised (by Bell) for five years, but still no remote terminal in our neighborhood.  Comcast is our new cable provider and they are running cable in the alleys right now.   I’ve received two notices to apply for high speed, so I think this is my only option.

As for wireless versus CAT, the old Mac 8500 is my wife’s access to the internet from home.  Unfortunately this machine is in a part of the house that is nearly impossible to get hard wire to.  If I have to buy wireless for it, I thought it made sense to use wireless for all.  

When I get a break I‘ll follow the links you folks provided and do some shopping.  If I get this working and have any information to share I will post here.

2

2003 / Cable modem and four computers

« on: November 06, 2003, 08:42:45 PM »

This is my first visit to Tech Survivors and I have a difficult question (I think).

High speed internet is being wired in our neighborhood via the local cable provider.  Now I must decide how to connect all of our computers.

(1) New Powerbook 17” 1.33GH with Airport Extreme. (2) Dual 500MH G4 tower. (3) 8500 180MH tower and (4) New custom built Win machine running XP Pro.

I was interested in Apple Airport Extreme but heard that wireless cards are not compatible with Mac 8500 180.   This old Mac has been fitted with an aftermarket USB card but USB wireless requires OS X to operate (right?) and this old 8500 Mac won’t operate in OSX.

Computer (2), the Dual 500 G4 has two hard drives.   One is exclusive OS 9.1,  the other hard drive is Jaguar.    I  need to access the internet from both hard drives in addition to the other Macintosh and Win machines.  

Is this possible without running Cat 5 hard wire?  

Separate question on same issue, will the cable providers maximum speed be achieved using this system or will it require hard wire to prevent loss of performance?

In case anyone wonders why I am running OS9, I still have software necessary to my photo business that will not operate on OSX.   Worse still, I installed and removed Panther from my new notebook when I discovered that none of Nikon's (the camera company) software was compatible beyond Jaguar.