How to set up a PC with a wireless card to connect to the internet through a Mac with an Airport card and internet sharing turned on:

Mac Settings:

1. Open System Preferences, Sharing Control Panel, Internet Tab. Once there, check only the 'Share your connection with Airport-equipped computers' box.
2. Click 'Start' then click 'Airport Options...'. Give your Network a Name. Set the channel to some number. This will be the 'Key index (advanced)' value on the PC.
3. Check the 'Enable encryption (using WEP)' box. Set the WEP key length to 40-bit.
4. Get WEP Key Maker. This freeware app lets you create a reproducible hex code for a given password or phrase. Use the app to get your Hex key from WEP Key Maker; i.e. Apple -> 077495204A. You enter it with a $ in front like this>: $077495204A to make it a valid Hex password. Click OK.

PC Settings:

1. In your Network Connections folder, double click your "Wireless Network Connection." Select Properties and go to the Wireless Networks Tab.
2. Select the Network that you created with your Mac and click Configure of Properties. Check the 'Data encryption (WEP enabled)' box and the 'Network Authentication (Shared mode)' box.
3. Enter the Hex network key (password) you used to create the Mac network. You dont need the $ symbol in front.
4. Set the 'Key index (advanced)' value to the value you used to set up the Mac Network.
5. Make sure that 'Enable IEEE 802.x authentication for this network' is not checked under the Authentication Tab.

Upon restarting you should have a connection through your wireless card! Thanks to Bruce Thomson on the Apple Discussions Forums.

I recently ran into the problem of linking two existing ethernet networks in my company.

Our first network has an SHDSL Internet access routed into the network by a SHDSL router. Our network is a heterogeneous, running a mix of Macintosh, Linux and Windows machines. We are in the graphical industry meaning we have heavy loads of files that need to be transfered at quite some speed over the network.

Now we were given a second floor office space by our landlord. However, wiring the network to that second floor seemed to be just unmanageable. A wireless connection would be just the right thing for us - so we thought!

Although the Macs in question are not that old, some Dual Processor PowerPC 1GHz "Mirror Doors," this particular model is just not "Airport Extreme" capable, meaning, you can only plug in an ordinary Airport card (i.e. 802.11b standard, at 11Mbit/s). This, however, would have been definitively too slow for us. I wanted a 802.11g, i.e. 51Mbit/s connection at least! So, what could I do?!

I thought of maybe linking the original network with the new second floor workstations with two Airport Extreme base stations, so I phoned up my dear friend Jason at Apple Store in Ireland - wonder who else is good friends with Jason! He then phoned up Apple Support - and I did the same to maybe even get a second opinion. Both said that owning older Macs, there would be no way of linking them by Airport Extreme, i.e. 802.11g, i.e. 51Mbit/s, i.e. so-called "Wi-Fi" wireless network.

I had a very long look through Internet pages. No answer whatsoever. Phoning up other wireless network vendours also turned out of no help: there was simply no way to join to networks over the air at a speed of 51 Mbit/s. Or was there?!

[robg adds: Read the rest of the article for a detailed solution to this problem. I haven't tested this one, so if anyone can confirm it, please do so via the comments...]

I decided to upgrade my old router and get an Airport Extreme base station. I was looking forward to being able to share my Epson Stylus 760 off the USB port but didn't know if my XP PC would be able to use it. After much searching, I found these instructions and all is well:

1. Make sure the printer is recognised by the base station.
2. Select 'Add a new printer' in Windows
3. Select 'Local Printer' in the dialog box (auto detect and install should be off), click next.
4. Choose 'Create a new port' and "Standard TCP/IP Port'. Click next.
5. For the printer IP address, enter the address of the base station ie. 10.0.1.1. The port name will be filled automatically. Click next.
6. For the device type, choose 'Hewlet Packard Jet Direct', then click Finish.
7. Choose your printer from the list and follow the rest of the prompts to install and configure the driver.

I can't guarantee that this will work on anything other than XP so YMMV.

If, like me, you've been looking for a way to route Rendezvous information between two networks, you should check out mTunnel.There's also an excellent article on setting it up on afp548.com.

We installed the software on one machine on each network and configured a tunnel. Now users on both networks can browse the others' file servers, etc. The only thing that doesn't seem to work is the Rendezvous part of iChatAV - can anyone suggest why this doesn't work?

If you find the "Connect To Server" dialog a little slow for connecting to AppleShare servers in the Jaguar Finder, then you might like DockBrowser (screenshot). DockBrowser is another useful piece of Apple sample code. It sits in your dock and shows the number of AppleShare servers on your LAN in a Mail-Style badge (at least all of them that advertise their service through Rendezvous).

To quickly connect to any server, just control-click on the dock icon to reveal the app's pop-up menu, which shows a list of the available servers, and select one to connect to it. Because the app is not searching for servers (it already knows their addresses), it is much faster than the "Connect" dialog. In the app's preferences, make sure you have "afpovertcp" selected, otherwise you will be shown all Rendezvous webservers on your LAN.

You can download the source code directly from Apple, and note that the Developer Tools are required to compile the application - I would post the app itself, however I'm not sure about the legality of that.

[robg adds: I tried compiling on my desktop G4, and it failed with two errors. I then copied the project over to my G4 laptop, and it built successfully. The two machines are running the same build of OS X (6L60 of 10.2.6) with the same version of the Dev Tools, so I'm not sure what's up ... but the app ran just fine once I moved it back to the desktop after compiling on the laptop. Update: Two friends, one on a desktop, one on a laptop. Desktop user: no luck, laptop user: compiled. That's two compiles on the laptops, zero compiles on the desktops ... odd!]

I found a way to remotely control my presentations on my PowerBook (using 10.2.6) via my P800 Smartphone, mostly like Salling Clicker does with the SE T68i and T610. I really missed this possibilty in my new P800, like many other users. So I figured out the basic steps to solve the problem:

How to setup a remote controlled MAC

1. Install a VNC Server on your Mac.
2. Install a VNC Client in your P800.
3. Establish a network connection between your MAC and P800 via Bluetooth.

Read the rest of the hint for instructions on making the P800 work as a remote control device...

My roommates and I share 1 printer. It was connected to my Mac and shared with their Windows XP boxes for months. We decided tonight to move the printer to the Windows XP router/firewall machine which is always on and never sleeps. But it didn't work ... after several hours of scratching my head, cursing, and perusing this site I managed to make it work with GIMP Print and the Windows XP TCP/IP Printing service hints. The results were very poor quality and taking forever to print. This was not good enough for us at all.

I finally stumbled upon step by step instructions for printing from an OS X machine to a not-PostScript printer on a Windows XP machine: How to Use a Printer Attached to a Windows XP Computer in Mac OS X.

I tried this with our Canon BJC-8200. It worked flawlessly, and only took 15 minutes to set up. Now my roommates and I can print from any machine in the house whenever we want, without having to run to the other end of the house, boot or wake the Mac, run back to hit Print on the document, then running back to the Mac to get the output from the printer.

I have a PowerBook and have different Location settings configured for home and office networks (DHCP vs fixed IP). When starting up at a location different than the current network settings, I notice that the Mac lags for several minutes as it times out searching for the DHCP Server, etc.

To get around this lag, I created a location setting for the AirPort with the Ethernet card inactive. When I shut down from either location, I set the location to "Airport Only." When starting up, there is no lag and I immediately switch to the setting where I'm physically located (home or office). Much faster.

This is something I threw together while at MacHack 2003. I have a PowerBook. Linux PC's are cheap. I have a lot of storage space in my Linux box, but only 30GB on my PowerBook. I keep all my Mp3s on my Linux PC and only a few gigs of them on my PowerBook, and share off my Linux server with NFS, Samba, or AFP.

However, if you try to play an MP3 from a non-existent remote NFS mount, the system will hang and be unstoppable!

The solution? This Perl script lets you more easily switch iTunes libraries -- so you can have multiple iTunes libraries to keep your remote MP3s out of your library when not at home (or wherever your remote mount is).

Addendum: The instructions on the project page have been revised and edited. If you still have trouble or uncertainty in setting up the program, contact me (my email is on the bottom of the project page).

At work I have a G4 and a P3 in my office. My P3 has most of my existing Java code on it, including a working connection to a CVS server. Now that I'm developing some Java on my Mac, I need to access my P3's files constantly. However, when I restart or log out of my G4 at night and log back in the next day, I'm naturally disconnected from a share to which I connect (the share is set up on the P3 and I connect to it via the G4).

So, here's how you can get OS X to reconnect to a Samba share at login:

1. Connect to the server (Cmd+K in the Finder, continue through the steps until you have it mounted on the Desktop)
2. Open System Preferences and go to Login Items.
3. Drag the shared folder from the desktop to an empty spot in the list of login items.

If all is well then it show up as the share name with the kind "Folder." It might pop up as a new Finder window at login, and checking Hide might hide the entire Finder, but it's better than nothing.

[robg adds: I thought we had a hint on this already, but my searches came up empty ... so here it is!]