Networking a mac

Jim Brennan

Jim Brennan

VHS Member Old Skool
I'm trying to network my mac with my wife's PC. Or at the very least with her printer, as mine has crapped out and I get tired of switching the cable all the time. We have a cable modem and a router and I use a G4 running Panther.

I went to network in my system preferences and fooled around, but couldn't figure it out. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
 
THanks Hans. I've been trying to do my homework re the settings on my mac. I never botered to see if the printer had an ethernet port, which it doesn't. So I guess I'll keep moving the cord for now...
 
You might want to upgrade to Tiger. For the specs:

Share Printers

Macs and PCs can also share printers. Shared Windows printers automatically appear in the Mac OS X Printer Setup Utility so they can be added to the Macintosh as a local printer queue. You can create a queue for as many shared Windows (and Macintosh) printers as you like, and any application that can print on the Macintosh can print to the shared printer.​
But one thing to note is that not all printer models are supported using this option. I have a Canon i960 and I can share it from a XP machine and my Mac will see it. But the Mac using a program called GIMP for printing and it doesn't have a driver for the Canon ixxx model printers.


As another option you could hook the printer to your Mac and share it for the Windows machine. Ah, but again there's going to be a weird printer driver issue. The Windows machine can only use a postscript compatible driver and not the printer's specific print driver. Not that big a deal if you need onnly basic printing capabilities.

But I'm not a Mac/Windows expert so maybe there's someone else who has figured out these issues.
 
Last edited:
I for some reason have alway's had a problem with home networks, I'm in no way computer stupid ( built my own system ) but it took me month's of on and off trying to get my laptop to work with my router and after owning the laptop for 2 years now finally succesfully got it to network with my office printer so the wife will stop taking over my computer to print stuff.....

ps. I have no advise for you, just wanted to let you know your not alone in the battle.
 
i thought that dude in the video said the only thing to do with a mac was use it as a boat anchor?
 
Well, my PC is the paperweight in this house. I fought switching for years. Now that I have I wonder what took me so long. The only reason my wife uses a PC is that she works for HP.

Thanks for the tips and the commiseration.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top