I recently bought a shiny new eMac running OS X.2 and there’s my old iMac running OS 8.6 sitting on a little table next to my computer desk, just chock full of interesting files and applications and junk that I’d like to move from the old to the new. A friend lent me a hub thinking I could just plug in ethernet cords leading to each machine and could move files from one to the other that way but no soap. I’m looking for a cheap and easy way to transfer files, preferably by plugging something I already have into something else I already have so that icons for each hard drive shows up on the other desktop. I don’t have a zip drive or any storage medium suitable for transferring large files so that isn’t an option. I can always email things to myself but that’s not very elegant now is it? Suggestions?
Um… you want to use the hub that your friend lent you. If you are having issues finding one computer on the network of the other computer, you probably have to configure the machines so that networking is enabled.
If you somehow think, ‘this isn’t working, i want to just connect them directly together’ I’m sure someone will tell you how, but in that scenario you will again have to configure the machines so that networking is enabled.
Pull the hard drive out of the old machine and put it in the new one.
I agree. The hub allows the two machines to be peers on a small network. The machines should see and recognize eachother.
so that networking is enabled.
The magic words. 
Make sure you have good ethernet cables (and not crossover cables) and that neither is being plugged into the ‘uplink’ slot. If the hub has LED’s - you want to see them happily blinking when you connect.
I concur. Ethernet is the way to go, and with those two computers it ought to be a doddle, barring any physical problems with either the cables or the hub.
Make sure that ethernet is selected in the AppleTalk control panel, and that File Sharing is active on both machines. If in any doubt, Mac Help will walk you through the process.