Local Network for Macs

[mrhappy]

My G4's seem to be multiplying!! Have a G4 400, 500dp, recently acquired a 1.0G Ti and now have a QS on the way...not sure what I'm gonna do with the last two yet but I'm thinking I'll probably want to get some sort of network going.

Question is what would be the best way to get these all communicating with each other through Ethernet, at least as far as exchanging files between them? Found a 'Linksys Etherfast 4-port cable/DSL Router with 4 port switch' Model BEFSR41 ver.2  in the garage... would something like this be needed/ usable??

Also I'll want to throw a white Macbook with 10.6.8 into the mix as that's the one that's online that I use to download the Mac SO 9 Live stuff!!

A Lot of people around here seem to be REALLY up on this stuff whereas I'm relatively clueless!! 

Thanks... MH

[Metrophage]

Easiest way for the to communicate over ethernet would probably be AppleTalk. On each system, open the AppleTalk control panel, set the connection to ethernet, and have it switch the service on. If you have some folders or drives you want to make accessible, select them, choose "get info" in the file menu at the top of the screen, and choose the info "sharing" to set sharing and permissions. The activate the File Sharing control panel and start the file sharing service.

To find Macs on your network, go to the Apple menu in the top of the screen and select Network Browser. If everything is set up, you should see connected Macs listed there. You shouldn't need to make any additional accounts or change permissions if you log on as the owner/admin of each system.

[mrhappy]

Thanks for the info Metrophage... I'll play around with that and see what happens!

[supernova777]

i use my fileserver as the "hub" for all my machines rather then
connecting them to each other i just connect to my server.. using the chooser i select "server ip" and type the ip address, it asks for user/pass and then shows me the available AFP shares which i then click to mount to my desktop..

if i wasnt using Nas4free on a pc box.. simply because pc hardware lets me fit more drives into a case... i would use one of my macs as an osx server and fit it with some large hard drives.. large because u can only fit so many drives into a g4.. so u wouldnt want to use low size drives for that.. but yea. setting up afp file sharing in osx is a snap. but yea for large drives u would need a supporting disk controller or mac that supports large drives.

The reason i use afp is because u can drag any file without worry from 9 onto the file server and resource forks are retained.. same as if the file was on your local drive. but its best to get in the habit of macbinary'ing or binhexing to store files.. but not all files on a server are 'archives' some i guess would be 'workng files' .. anyway afp allows for that;)