Network your home PC and MacPart I - Getting your PC to "act" like a Mac The Overview In this Part I of the PC to Mac "how to", we are going to look at how you can use software on your PC to allow it to network essentially as if it were a Mac. In addition, in Step 1, we will review installing the hardware on a typical Mac. We'll use a Mac LC475. You'll use a similar installation process for other Macs, but the LC series use a unique slot called the LC PDS (for processor direct slot). Other Macs will use a CommSlot (communications slot), PCI slots, a NuBus slot (on older Macs that may not be worth installing on a network because of other hardware limits...memory, hard drive, etc). Also, as you probably know if you own one, most new Macs, including G3s and the iMac, come with Ethernet built-in, either with 10/100Mbps or 10Mbps speed available. In every case, the software installation will be essentially the same in every 7.x version of the Mac OS. (We'll leave Mac OS 8.x for Part II of the PC to Mac how-to.) The new Macs will automatically install the software during the initial "turn on" of the computer after stepping you through some questions. A very neat ease-of-use feature on the Mac, but I won't cover the details here. The software installation on the Mac side, both for the hardware and for the network setup, will be covered in Step 2. In Step 3, we'll cover the installation of the special software on the PC that will allow it to network essentially as a Mac. For this, we'll be using PC MACLAN from Miramar Systems. PC MACLAN can be set up to allow your PC to act as a "client" for a Mac AppleTalk server. AppleTalk is the standard protocol used on Macs and every Mac comes with AppleTalk and can function as a server. (There is no extra software needed as with NT Server on the PC). In addition, PC MACLAN can allow your PC to function as a Mac file server and accept Mac clients. We'll focus on setting up a PC as a client since we think most users will be using MACLAN because they already have several Macs networked and want to add a PC into that network. At the end of Step 3, you should have a functioning PC to Mac network. We'll make a few closing comments about the other features available in MACLAN. Finally, we'll finish with some quick recommendations and closing thoughts in the Summary page. We won't include a full review of MACLAN, but will provide some insights on our experience during the installation of our PC to Mac network. One final thought in this overview. Before you begin your PC to Mac network, we recommend you also read Part II of the PC to Mac "how to" in which we'll cover using another software product, Dave from Thursby Systems. This software provides the functions to allow your Mac to network essentially as a PC. But, first, let's concentrate on Part 1: getting our PC to network as if it is a Mac. And, let's begin with the hardware setup on the Mac, in Step 1. Read on. Resources If you don't already have a copy of PC MACLAN, you can read all about it at their web site, www.miramarsys.com, or you can go directly to the demo page and download a working copy to try and to use through this how to.
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