I have an old laptop running 10.3 and a printer with ethernet port that I want to use in a room that has no access points. Can I attach the printer to the ethernet port of the laptop, get the laptop onto my wifi, and share this printer so that others on the network can print to it?
10.3 unfortunately has too old a WiFI to be secure. It uses the old WEP encryption standard which has been hacked. Unless you are in some remote location, I wouldn't use it as a WiFI network device. Although you can put a WiFi ethernet bridge on it that supports 802.11g to get the higher encryption of WPA2, and connect the machine via ethernet. As for the sharing, that depends on if the Mac has the printer driver for the printer on 10.3. If not, then you are probably out of luck. See my FAQ* http://www.macmaps.com/printersx.html to see if you can find a driver for it.
* Links to my pages may give me compensation.
10.3 unfortunately has too old a WiFI to be secure. It uses the old WEP encryption standard which has been hacked. Unless you are in some remote location, I wouldn't use it as a WiFI network device. Although you can put a WiFi ethernet bridge on it that supports 802.11g to get the higher encryption of WPA2, and connect the machine via ethernet. As for the sharing, that depends on if the Mac has the printer driver for the printer on 10.3. If not, then you are probably out of luck. See my FAQ* http://www.macmaps.com/printersx.html to see if you can find a driver for it.
* Links to my pages may give me compensation.
use old laptop as access point for printer?
