I have been using Macs since 1988. Recently, I had to buy a Windows machine for home use to get the Ultraline high-speed Internet connection from Netvigator. I have an Ethernet hub (switchable 10/100) as well at home and would like to set up a network between my Windows machine (a Compaq 5220 with 128 MB Ram, 350 MHz AMD K6 II, 10/100 Ethernet card, 4.3 gb hard disk and 16 MB Banshee videocard) and my PowerBook G3/250 Mark II. I would like to access the Ultraline from my PowerBook as well as perform file sharing and some head-to-head gaming. Is this possible and do I need to buy/use additional software such as PCMacLan (I already have version 7.2)? The Netvigator guy installed an ATM Card in one of the PCI slots of the Windows machine, and it connects to an ADSL modem.
UMIT TEZCAN Hong Kong I had to call in some serious help on this one, but the source insists on anonymity. Thank you anyway . . . you know who you are. Apparently, there was no need to buy a PC for Ultraline at all. The C&W HKT people don't seem to realise - despite repeated discussions with Apple - that it is entirely possible to connect Macs to Ultraline directly.
The gentleman who helped me with this problem was told last October by the technician setting up the set-top box installed with iTV - now Ultraline - that it could only work with Windows 95 and 98 (not NT or 3.1). The set-top box connected to an additional modem and line splitter (for the three pairs of wires hidden inside the one telephone line to your house) had a PCMCIA card slot with a 10-Base-T Ethernet card and a reverse - or 'crossover' - Ethernet cable to be connected to the PC.
'I started the connection for a while by booting into Virtual PC and Win 95 and running the enclosed app,' my adviser wrote. 'Mac's OpenTransport took over and everything worked fine on either system.' He later discovered on the CD that came with the C&W subscription a boot application called '1.5M UltraLine' that enabled his Mac to connect to Ultraline even without running Virtual PC.
PCMacLan should allow you to go head to head for gaming with the PC. Depending on the game you might have to use another product called DAVE, my adviser wrote. To get things going, unplug the crossover wire from the Mac and plug it into the PC and start the boot application. Now hook your reverse Ethernet cable to a hub. You can then share that broadband connection with many machines on the hub and local network.
To make things run smoothly you might need one more cheap old Mac to run as a gateway machine, and one software router, all dedicated to run the packets to the hub and the individual machines. This can be done on the Mac side by setting up a software router.