We have an old iMac at home. Something for the wife and Kids to do e-mail, AIM, etc…
Well, it was time for an upgrade, and I just bought myself a brand new e-Mac. I got the internet configured after only a few hours, and would really like to get a lot of documents and files off the old system. I have a crossover ethernet cable between the two computers. Have turned on file-sharing (I think) on the iMac, but can’t for the life of me, see the old computer on the new one.
Could someone Please provide detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to drag/copy files from the old computer (OS 8.6) onto the new one (OS X.something)?
All the Mac-users that actually could have helped you are likely so put off by the thread title that they’ll only drive by to call you a Macophobe.
But, anyway, here’s my idea:
What about Yahoo/Hotmail/or G-mail? If you have suffeciently fast internet, perhaps you could just put them online? How many MB’s of documents are you looking to transfer here?
Networking with macs is normally very easy (all I had to do with my new i-mac was plug in the cable and it was instantly on the net and able to browse my windows network), not sure what prouble you’re encountering but I reccomend appleinsider.com’s genius bar forum for mac tech support.
Also your new emac comes with a free 60 day .MAC account which IIRC allows you to easilly store files on apple’s secure website and transfer them to your other computer.
Wait a second, you’ve decided Macs aren’t easy to use because you “think” you turned filing sharing on and it didn’t work? Wow.
Macintosh is a totally different platform than Windows. Of course it’s different and you have to learn it. I share the exact same feeling about PCs, I’ve been a Mac person all my life and when I have to use PCs, I get very confused. It doesn’t mean one platform’s better/easier, it just means that switching from apples to oranges takes some adjustment.
I might also add that you’re trying to network between computers whose operating systems are several years apart. That makes it more difficult and complicating because you’re cross-platforming.
You need to make sure file sharing is turned on on BOTH computers. On 8.6 it’s in control panels, on OS X it’s in system preferences. With 8.6, it WILL take a while.
Not sure if this works when one operating system is not OSX, but you can mount the older computer’s hard drive onto your new computer’s desktop with a simple firewire cable:
attach firewire cable to both computers’ firewire ports.
shut down the older mac (iMac).
boot up older mac while holding down the “T” key. (Make sure the newer mac is already up & running)
wait until the screen on the older mac turns blue with a large yellow firewire logo bouncing around on your screen. At this point, the old iMac’s hard drive should show up on your desktop, just like any old external drive or CD-ROM.
start dragging away like a madman.
Again, i’m not sure if this will work, since you don’t have OSX installed on your old iMac. Otherwise a crossover ethernet cable should do the trick as long as you have file sharing turned on on the older mac.
I just wanted to mention that I always got a kick out of stuff like this when I had a Mac. Someone would tell me to hold some odd key down while booting and it would fix the problem I was having. Quite a non-intuitive act for a machine that is usually very intuitive.
An “older iMac running OS 8.6” will likely not have firewire, although if it does, that is a good idea. It took me a while to network two OS 9.0 Macs together with an ethernet cable. Incidentally, you probably don’t need the “crossover” cable, as the computers can figure it out and make the switch internally with a normal cable.
Another option is to manually set an IP (192.168.0.1 will probably work fine) for the OS X eMac (System Preferences -> Network -> Ethernet configuation -> Manually set IP) and turn on the FTP server (System Preferences -> Sharing -> Check box for FTP server). Then just use Fetch or IE or Netscape or any other FTP client to FTP the files over from the iMac to the eMac.
You probably will need to manually set an IP for the OS 8.6 Mac too (use 192.168.0.2). It’s been a while since I did that, but I think it will be in Control Panel->TCP/IP or Network or something.
Well, the common handy stuff (like holding down “C” to force booting from a CD) is spelled out in the built-in help/documentaion, and the obscure stuff (like the antiquated “zap the PRAM”) are usually along the lines of Easter Eggs than anything else.
Allowing sharing on both computers may be more than you need. I used to set up sharing on my iMac with 10.1 and simply choose it from the Chooser on my LC475 running 8.6 or 9.2. The iMac shared folders appears on the other desktop and you simply drag and drop all the files you want to copy across. See this article for connecting.
If you’re running MacOS 8.6 or thereabouts on your old Mac and (presumably) the latest OS X on the new one, you need to enable oldfashioned non-IPbased-AppleTalk on the new Mac (it isn’t even enabled by default, modern Macs fileshare using AppleTalk over IP). Go the Network Control Panel, where it says “show”, specify Ethernet, and then click the AppleTalk tab and check the checkbox “make AppleTalk active”. Otherwise turning on file sharing still doesn’t cause the OS X box to look around and see non-IP-based AppleTalk volumes being made available to it, such as your MacOS 8.6 box.
And yes, Apple’s virtual abandonment of the old AppleTalk protocol is annoying. They’ve made TCP so it can connect as easily as AppleTalk (i.e, without typing in subnets and addresses and routers and all that) but it should be more fully backwards compatible. (You can mount your OS 8.6 volume on your OS X computer following the above instrux but not vice versa if I remember correctly).