I just purchased a used MacSE (trying to get mom on the internet) running on system 7.1. I want to be able to transfer files from my G3 running 8.6 to the SE.

A) Is this possible?
B) If so, how?

TIA,
David

Yes, David, it is possible.
First, you must buy an ethernet card (used, unfortunately) from Shreve Systems (www.shrevesys.com) or any other used-Mac-hardware vendor, and an ethernet cross-over cable, for the SE (Your G3 will have ethernet built-in). Your (blue and white?) G3 the hard disk most likely is HFS+ Formatted. If that is the case (you can tell by going to the Apple System Profiler, which should be in your Apple Menu, and then clicking on "Devices and Volumes"), then you will need to re-format your hard disk, or make a partition of it that is HFS Formatted. Once you do that, the SE will be able to read it. The problem here is that in order to make a partition of your drive, you need to erase all the info.

PS - You bad son; I got mom on the internet with a 5500/225! (Just kidding)

Or you could just hook a printer cable between their printer/modem ports.

I guess it depends on the file size. If you (a trusting friend) has a ZIP drive, you can transfer them across that. That way, no reformatting, they both have SCSI ports on the back.

------------------
"No Brian! Those chicken wings are really spicy, don't eat those!

I never seen a man eat so many chicken wings..."

.... that is assuming he doesn't have one of the newer B/W G3's that doesn't have SCSI *or* serial...

I vote for the zip disk option, since it's probably the easiest. You could easily find a SCSI external zip for the SE (or borrow from a friend), and you may already have a zip for the B/W (internal, or external USB).

Ethernet would be useful if a. it's already installed for some reason on the SE, and b. if you plan on hooking mom up to a cablemodem. But seriously, if you have $40/mo. for a cablemodem, then you should spend some of that on a newer system for the ol' lady.

You can also transfer files modem to modem using clarisworks. Goto Apple's Tech info library and search for the title( Imac: Transferring Files Modem to Modem). I don't have the article ID number; I saved it as a text file. I could email it to you if you want.
Jeff

David, since I have my old SE still gathering dust in the closet (but slowly since it's in its own carrying case) I can't help wondering how many files you really need to transfer to that Mac to "get Mom on the Internet".

I'm guessing you have a reasonably large HD connected to the SE already; what I'd do is connect a SCSI CD-Rom drive to the spare SCSI port, do a clean-install from the CD of 7.6.1 which I understand you can buy pretty cheap and will still run in 8MB (correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that the SE's limit?), and then install AOL 3 (sic) from an old floppy disk.

My guess is that you can't run OS 8.x on a Mac SE, and only AOL 3 can run on a Mac that old.

Personally, I doubt that anybody's Internet experience will be satisfactory on a Mac SE unless all you really want is e-mail; and then it's very likely the e-mail client of choice will be AOL or a compatible old version of Eudora.

Once I'd simply get the SE into cyberspace, I would actually transfer the files as e-mail attachments.

But keep your head up! It won't be long before you can get a used iMac for $299!!!

schwei

In my experence, if you are just using Apple FileSharing, you can share a HFS+ drive on a old system just fine, you don't need to reformat. I even think that the only problem you would have is that you were using a HFS+ drive on a older system, not a older system dharing a HFS+ disk. Well, it worked for me!