[ryaxnb]

My Grandma just moved up from a iMac 333 + iBook 366 running OS 9.2 to an iMac G5 1.8 + everything else, and although she's mainly using the iMac G5, she occasionally uses the iBook and iMac and would like to know how to share the Internet with these machines. Obviously Mac OS X can easily share the net, but can Mac OS 9.2 accept it?

Knowing where to find cheap hubs and stuff would be nice also. Finally, with this setup:
Internet to hub
iMac G3 or iBook to hub
iMac G5 to hub
Can you use crossover cables?

Oh, sorry about my last thread. I have not been on the Mac scene for a long time.

[Krypton]

Under OS X, just go to the Sharing pane in System Preferences and then the Internet tab. That will allow you to share the net connection over ethernet, Airport or Firewire depending on what you have available.

The OS 9 Macs should see the connection no problem provided that you select the right interface (e.g. selecting ethernet in the Remote access control panel I think).

[Big Mac]

Internet sharing is super easy - merely a matter of connecting cables really. You can find a Cable/DSL router for almost nothing after rebates. Any of the name brands are fine, although I personally don't like Linksys (one of the most popular brands) because they don't provide any official Mac support. You will need only the router, the Macs and ethernet (Cat 5) straight-through patch cables. Crossover cables are not what you want; they are used for connecting one computer directly to another. Connect one ethernet cable from your DSL/Cable modem to the uplink port of your router, and then connect additional ethernet cables from the router to each of the machines.

Any of the routers you choose are going to be administered by way of local web page accessible from any computer on the LAN. Now if you're only getting a wired router, there's not much to do with the administration page. If you choose a wireless router you'll want to spend some time configuring and securing it. Matters involving WEP encryption can get a little complicated, but you shouldn't have much of a problem. Configuring each of the Macs on a wired network is quite simple, as the only thing you usually have to do is go into the Network pane of OS X, choose TCP/IP and select Dynamic configuration. For OS 9 and below open the TCP/IP control panel and select Dynamic. Now if you are using a wireless router you may want to give your computers static IPs for security reasons, but that's a secondary concern. And for wireless routers you'll want to enable WEP encryption. One thing to remember about that is, the WEP string supplied by the router may need to be preceded by a $ sign.

As an alternative to all of this, you could also use personal Internet sharing through OS X, which turns your Mac into a router. If you go this route, you'll need to have the client computers connected over one network interface while your router Mac is connected to the Internet through a different one. The most typical setup in that case would be connecting to the Internet through ethernet and sharing that connection with the other Macs through Airport WIFI. Hope this helps a bit.