InterNet Acces For A "PowerBook 540c" Computer

something cheap lol. u dont have dsl or cable? its has a built in enet port u know

well cary it has a aaui or whatever jack. looks like a small pinced together connection

You'll need a dongle to change the port into a standard ethernet port. It should be easy to find on ebay or whatever.

You'll want somthing like this. A few different companies made them, should be easy to find one, I'm sure someone here has one they'd sell you cheap.

That port is actually the miniature SCSI port.

If you want to use it you'll need an HDI-30 adapter. There are two types, one is a regular SCSI adapter, and one allows you to use SCSI Disc Mode, much like FireWire Target Mode of newer Macs. Some have a switch that allows you to choose either mode on one adapter. The SDM supporting ones will have all 30 pins. The ones that are SCSI adapters only should be missing one pin, IIRC. If it's got all 30 pins and a switch on the adapter, it supports both modes.

"PowerBook: Using SCSI Devices" http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=13611
The 5300 has an IDE drive, so technically it's called "HD target mode" http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=19184

You can find more by searching the Apple KnowledgeBase for "SCSI Disk Mode"

Uh, a lock?

No seriously, that's the slot for a Kesnington laptop cable, like a bike lock, you lock it around a desk, radiator, whatever. There are no-name clones cheaper than the Kensington branded one.

2: That is the HDI-30 SCSI port. That's what all that jazz I wrote about SCSI disk mode and the adapters was all about.

The port between the HDI-30 SCSI and the AAUI is the video port.

Cary,

I wouldn't expect lightning-fast internet speeds with your PB. The limiting factor here is going to be the computer itself, not the network card or the internet connection. You can speed up browsing by using a RAM disk for your internet cache, for example, but you aren't going to experience the 'net very fast with a 68k Mac.

Cheers,

The Czar

it's waay faster than dialup.

Here's a chart I did showing various wired-10BT/wifi-b file transfer speeds of a PPCed 540C, a PB3400 and a Pismo. The best I could get out of the 540C was around 350KB/s, that with a PPC CPU and OS 9.1 using Timbuktu. Still, I reckon a 68K 5xx ought to do something close to that, all depends on the protocol used I suppose.

As The Czar hinted, your webbrowsing speeds are limited mostly by the CPU/OS/RAM-limits/slow-HD/etc., not the ethernet connection. Older 'puters just feel very slow with modern over-bloated media-heavy web pages.

hth,

dan k

So just use a router, then the computer speed is irrelevant. A router costs all of, what? like $20 these days?

dan k

Most companies put the minimum specs up so they don't have to deal with all the calls from people wondering why their 16Mhz 386 running Win3.1 doesn't work well with a broadband connection. It's really just a case of CYA so they have a minimum level to "offical" support that they have to train their personel to deal with. I've had far slower machines than your 540c plugged into my router. I wouldn't worry much, but I also wouldn't expect much help from them if you call about issues with it.

Mac (via Ethernet) ---> Router (via Ethernet) ---> DSL modem ---> DSL wall jack

the router hooks between the DSL/Cable Modem and the rest of the network. The sole purpose of it is to let many machines access one device, without overloading the device all the machines are trying to access.
It also let's all the devices play friendly, as they are not fighting for the modem at the same time. Essentially, when many computers access the DSL modem, all the modem knows is that there is supposed to be one (1) machine accessing it. If there are a bunch, it goes nuts, as it does not know where to send the data. The router takes everything the machines ask/send for, and puts it into the modem and makes the modem see it as one machine. The router "routes" the data to the appropriate locations, and is smarter than the modem and can deal with multiple devices. This is a couple of examples of what you need (pretty cheap, and if you pay attention to the reviews, they can be reliable)

most routers can be setup thru the web browser, by putting in the network URL (like "192.168.0.1") and will come with instructions. Then, if you wish to have other machines access it, use a switch (like a multi-port ethernet device, allows many devices to hook to each other) and you should be good to go, be sure to have enough/long enough ethernet cables to do it. Typically, 4-5 is the safest to have in the house. I generally keep a couple cross-overs (for computer to computer connections) and at least 6 straight thru (computer to hub/router)

That should be it!

A router can have wifi, or not. Even if it does you can turn off the wifi part if you aren't using it. For that reason I always suggest folks buy a router with wifi builtin - may not need it now but it's nice to have once you do decide you want it. Also, most routers have a hub or switch builtin. All that means is that you get several ports into which you can plug several 'puters.

The three macs site is a good place to start learning about this stuff. Read the "Hardware Routers" page for a nice basic description of what we're recommending.

dan k