[druber]

I have a DSL connection, currently attached to a 1st gen Airport (one Enet port) which serves my iBook and my roommate’s Vaio. I also have an old Umax J700 which has been sitting idle for quite a while now. Okay, partly cause I horked it up somehow and couldn’t get it to boot, haven’t messed with it yet to fix it. It’s running OS9.2, my iBook’s under 10.1.x, soon 10.2. The iBook’s getting low on HD space, so I’m thinking it might be handy to set up a network so that I can toss files from the iBook to the Umax and vice versa. Maybe set a small partition on the Umax to host a small personal website or ftp server. Nothing too earthshaking.

Lots out there about hubs, routers, bridges, switches, etc. I’ve read a bit in the forums, but there’s so much info. 10-year Mac user, besides setting up the Airport (easy), the only networking I’ve done was Localtalk jazz to play Marathon x040 style. Can anyone recommend a specific router or whatever that will allow me to do this? Printer sharing really not necessary. Let’s assume I’ll buy a new desktop in the next year or so to replace the Umax. Basically, how can I go iBook->Airport->Ethernet->Desktop and maintain net access for both?

[ghporter]

Ok, you have two issues: how to share storage across a network, and can your Umax clone handle this under 9.x. The answers are "easy," and "probably-if you can make it boot."

The sharing/networking part is easy. Since you want both wireless and wired connections, I suggest a product like the Netgear MR814, a wireless access point/cable-DSL router. This device is Mac friendly (configured through your browser), handles the wireless (AirPort) connection nicely, and provides 4 wired ethernet ports. You connect your broadband modem (cable or DSL-doesn't matter) to the WAN port, your wired computers to the LAN ports, and use your browser to set it up.

Now, for the Umax. Depending on how you "horked it up," you may just have to reload the OS. You shouldn't have any problem sharing resources under OS 9.x with a machine running OS X.x.

[druber]

Aa, Umax was just fine. Guess it just needed to sit for 9 months to teach it a lesson. So I can't buy a wired router and still talk iBook to clone? Seems a shame to retire the Airport, sell it off at a loss. Maybe I'm happier than I thought with things as they are.

[ghporter]

Yes you can just plug your AirPort base into the wired router. I must have misread your first post Anyway, if you do that you'll have to change the settings on the base. In the Network tab of the Admin Utility, uncheck the "Distribute IP addresses" check box. According to this TIL, this configures the base to act as a wired-to-wireless bridge, which is just what you want. Your router will have to provide automatic IP addresses, but that's pretty standard for this sort of box, so it shouldn't be a problem.