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Hooking two macs together

Hello,

The business I work for is purchasing a new Intel Mac and they want to utilize its processing power with the current mac we have now.
The current mac we have is the PowerPc with Tiger OS.
The idea is that I edit a project and then pass it on to the old mac or the new one depending on what would work best so that it can render a project in the timeline or run compressor while I continue to edit on another project. Is that possible? I have looked at connecting the two via firewire and targeting one of the macs. I don't understand if that would be an advantage or not.

Any ideas or pitfalls?
I'm guessing having an older mac and a new one with different operating systems is going to be our first hurdle.
Thanks for any input.
Ymir Jr

PowerMac G5

Posted on Nov 16, 2009 11:07 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Nov 16, 2009 11:23 AM

The computers, if on a shared network, could share files more naturally;
in fact PCs and Macs work together in a network.

FireWire (Target Disk Mode) won't work to naturally share files since one
of the two computers would be only seen as an external FW hard drive.

Setting up a small computer network would be a better idea; since you
can also share internet and other things. This could be done over an
Ethernet network since all devices (or many) have hardware identifiers
that help route data to and from them accurately & securely in a LAN.

But, I know nothing about setting up such a thing; so hopefully others
with that kind of information or links to refer to, will contribute here.
More information on both the computers involved, their OS X systems
and hardware configurations (build model, year, etc) would be helpful.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂
9 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Nov 16, 2009 11:23 AM in response to YmirJr

The computers, if on a shared network, could share files more naturally;
in fact PCs and Macs work together in a network.

FireWire (Target Disk Mode) won't work to naturally share files since one
of the two computers would be only seen as an external FW hard drive.

Setting up a small computer network would be a better idea; since you
can also share internet and other things. This could be done over an
Ethernet network since all devices (or many) have hardware identifiers
that help route data to and from them accurately & securely in a LAN.

But, I know nothing about setting up such a thing; so hopefully others
with that kind of information or links to refer to, will contribute here.
More information on both the computers involved, their OS X systems
and hardware configurations (build model, year, etc) would be helpful.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

Jan 12, 2010 10:12 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for the information. I have read through the link that BDAqua has so graciously provided. Thank you so much! I have turned on the XGrid on my main mac in the sharing section of the preferences. Does anyone know what I need to do next? The article did not take me any farther than that.
I will start a new thread if necessary.
Thanks,
Ymir Jr.

Jan 12, 2010 10:22 AM in response to YmirJr

As long as you have a router and connect your Macs to it and thus to each other (and the internet if required) it's easy to set up 'File Sharing', where a computer can mount another computer's designated folders on its desktop and access them just like an external hard disk. It works best if you have the same account name on each computer, but you can access any account you have the password for. The method is described here:

http://homepage.mac.com/rfwilmut/notes/sharing.html

This works fine with Leopard and Tiger; if you have Panther that's a special case - it can be done but there are extra steps which I can post if you need.

Jan 17, 2010 6:25 PM in response to BDAqua

Many thanks to everyone for their advice. The new mac will be arriving later this week. I will have 3 macs to network together. The first two are older and are Powermac G5s with Tiger OS. So I will have the new mac + those to tie together. We have a new Xserve with a raid storage device (not an Xraid). Our data center set up the Xserver and raid but I would like to be the administrator for our 3 macs.
Thanks again for the information and I will add to the post as I work through the process.
Ymir Jr.

Jan 19, 2010 6:18 AM in response to YmirJr

Here's a trick I sometimes employ. In Google set up a search:

site:www.macgeekery.com/gspot/2006-06/setting up_an_xgrid_controller_intiger

It may show a cached version (which it does in this case). Maybe not as pretty as the original, but it's sometimes a way to get old information that's no longer available.

Hooking two macs together

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