[sushiism]

Right I'm wanting to network my ever so lovely powerbook800 to this filthy pc (because im using adsl internet and my cheap unbranded £80 adsl modem has no mac drivers (heck i dont even think the drivers it uses are made by its own company and are stolen, but it works)).

Anyway
my question is what do I actually need to do a simple ethernet network from the powerbook to this so i can use the internet on the powerbook via the pc's connection and share some files? The guy in pc world said i would need 2 cables, a hub, and a card for the pc which i didnt really agree with, eventually he said it "should" work with one card and a crossover cable but i heard th powerbook doesnt need that.

Anyway
what things exactly do I need for this to work, if the ethernet card needs to be anything specific please state.

The other option is wireless networking cos the powerbook already has an airport card i never use so what sort of thing qwould i need to wirelessly network the pc/pb for inthernet sharing and file sharing as i stated above.

Thanks in advance, I searched before asking but couldnt find anything specific enough to my question.

[ghporter]

Your description of your "filthy PC" isn't too helpful. A brand and model would make it easier to tell you what equipment would be needed, and which Windows version it runs is crucial.

Since Windows 98 there has been something called Internet Connection Sharing in the Windows OSs. This lets you, well, share your internet connection. This is a serious possibility.

Also, your rather cheap modem needs a little fleshing out. Is it a USB modem, an internal card, or what? If it isn't either of those, it probably doesn't use "drivers," but rather a software PPPoE or PPPoA solution. Relatively modern Mac OSs do that for you, but so do "gateway routers"-without using your PowerBook's resources!

Details, please. This sounds like an interesting puzzle!

[sushiism]

oh the filthy opc is a homemade p2 300(no network or wireless card yet), and its running windows 2K and its a usb modem (calls itself a "conexant accessrunner USB ADSL WAN adapter" however the thing itself says nothing at all about conexant and just says 'usb adsl modem' on it) and yep uses some sort of software PPPoE/A thinger. How would I set osx.2 to use this for net access on its own because that really would save me alot of trouble?

Thanks in advance, speedy reply appreciated because its 1:20am and my last chance to get a lan card this week is prolly tomorrow

[ghporter]

First off, being USB means it probably does need drivers. Conexant's site only mentions a PC driver in relation to this product, so you're probably stuck there. You'd need a driver to tell your Mac how to talk to the modem, and there you're out of luck. There are Linux drivers, but not Mac drivers.

Now the good news. You can add a network card to the PC and use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) to allow your Mac to connect through the PC. Here the PC will act as a fairly simple router and give you the connection through the network card.

(As if you didn't already figure this out, that USB modem is going to cost you a lot more because it's USB. An ethernet DSL modem would have been a better buy.)

Anyway, here in the States, you can find a PCI NIC that'll work with Win2K for as little as $10. That's less than (where the @#$%^%$$ is the stupid "pound sterling" key? ah, there it is!)₤10 for you. Finding a free PCI slot in a home made PC may or may not be an issue, but is usually doesn't matter which slot you put it in.

Configuring ICS is a bit of a chore, but not too bad. Since I don't have 2K on hand to play with, I can't walk you through it, but it does have some pretty good help.

Once you've got the NIC in the PC and ICS set up, plug an ethernet cable between the PC and your Mac-you may need a crossover cable here-and you should be cooking.

[sushiism]

ahh thanks great response , pretty much just what i wanted to know

[sushiism]

well ive got it working, well the internet sharing part, file sharing still isnt but thats ok. The only problem is windows 2K likes to drastically crash every so often :/ about every 20 minutes max, and i dont mean bluescreen i mean totally freeze with a little screen corruption maybe, even when its sat there doing nothing

[ghporter]

Originally posted by sushiism:
The only problem is windows 2K likes to drastically crash every so often :/ about every 20 minutes max, and i dont mean bluescreen i mean totally freeze with a little screen corruption maybe, even when its sat there doing nothing

Ouch! I know that it isn't very politically correct to say nice things about Windows OSs here, but Win2K should be solid as a rock! If it's failing the way you're describing you could do yourself a big favor by reinstalling it. If it still gives you fits, you have a bad hard drive. A corrupt OS or a bad hard drive on your (admittedly Frankenstein-like) broadband access device is a major pain that you could fix fairly easily. My money is on the OS needing reloading...

Oh, and Happy Christmas!

[sushiism]

2k has been pretty good to me i must say, noly a few really big problems but a few is great when you used to have win98 crash 8 times a night. I might reinstall it but i dont use this machine anymore except when im home. HD should be fine its brand new recently, I'll open it up and make sure the gfx card is in right because i had to move that to a differnt slot. I might try to share the net over win98 which is still on the other drive hmm but its not the second edition and thus doesnt have ICS built in :/

[ghporter]

Ah, moved a card, eh? That could be a big issue. Also (I sort of mentioned this) some machines are sensitive to which PCI slot you put certain cards in-particularly NICs. If your graphics card is in fine (do try the machine after you check!) and it still crashes on you, you could try moving the NIC to other slots.

There's a reason PCs are popular with "tinkers"...

[Angus_D]

Of course the best solution would be to get a nice ADSL modem/router box. My SpeedTouch 510 is a very nice piece of kit, serving my G4/iMac/ThinkPad. And it is only £140+VAT from here.

[sushiism]

im not paying £140 to use the internet on both computers when im hardly ever home anymore Esp when ipaid £80 for the modem in the first place