How to copy my 8600 HD to my PB G4

Stephen X said:

I've got a new powerbook g4, and want to copy the files off my old 8600 before I bid it farewell.

Is there an easy way to do this? If I order one of those expensive SCSI-to-USB cables, is that all I'll need, or is it more complicated than that?

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You could always buy a cheap firewire PCI card. I'm quite positive a 8600 can not do target disk mode, and I'm not sure if you you could do target disk mode even if it was the PB that was acting as the FW HD; but it could work. Best bet, is to just plug them both into the same network.

I know someone considering a similar switch - the SCSI HDD on the 8600 is the real limiting factor here. A few other thoughts:

* I agree that the 8600 won't support FireWire target disk mode, but if you bought a FireWire PCI card and an external FireWire HDD, you could move your data and still have an external drive for your PB.

* A PCI USB card + a memory stick might also work. You'd have to price out whether this combo is cheaper or more/less useful to you in the long term than investing in a FW card & external HDD.

* A network transfer (as the previous post suggests) would also work - you'd have to share the PB's hard drive, then plug the PB and the 8600 into the same router, map out the PB's HDD on the 8600 and begin transfer (very slowly, it will be). You might be able to get away without a router if you use a crossover cable directly between the two systems, but this is just speculation.

Make sure you update th 8600 to 9.2.2 - it's not the best OS, but it will play better with whatever you decide than earlier versions. Either way you do it, you'll have to spend a few bucks to do the setup - good luck!

I had to do the same when I moved from my 603-clone to my iBook. I bought an ethernet card for the old Power Mac and transferred the important stuff to the iBook (I didn't even had to use a crossover cable - they somehow recognized that they were connected directly).

Since both your Macs should have ethernet built-in, you probably only need an ethernet cable for a few dollars (at least in my opinion). If you use AppleTalk, the configuration is relatively easy.

Edit: It takes indeed a very long time to transfer a whole harddisk via ethernet - but it's cheap.

tom_s said:

I had to do the same when I moved from my 603-clone to my iBook. I bought an ethernet card for the old Power Mac and transferred the important stuff to the iBook (I didn't even had to use a crossover cable - they somehow recognized that they were connected directly).

Since both your Macs should have ethernet built-in, you probably only need an ethernet cable for a few dollars (at least in my opinion). If you use AppleTalk, the configuration is relatively easy.

Edit: It takes indeed a very long time to transfer a whole harddisk via ethernet - but it's cheap.

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a month ago a friend of mine did the tranfer by way of an ethernet cable.....he was going from an older powerbook running OS 8.1 to a new iBook.......in his he did have to buy a cross-over cable (around $10 +/-) and that was all........took a few hours to transfer the data but it worked fine

FoxyKaye said:

You might be able to get away without a router if you use a crossover cable directly between the two systems, but this is just speculation.

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No cross-over cable is required. The NIC chip in the PB G4 is capable of detecting that it is connected directly to another computer using a standard patch lead and switch the pairs dynamically.

Literally plug a cable into each, they will auto-assign 169.254 addy's. Once configured, your PB will broadcast that it is an AppleTalk server and away you go 🙂

Chris

Stephen X said:

Thanks, all; that's really helpful.

Chris, just to show what a novice I am: Is the cable I need just a standard Ethernet cable?

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Yes, just a standard Ethernet cable.