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pepdesign

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 30, 2014
1
0
Hi,

Can someone help me?

I want to use my two macs to work together, how do i do that? they are both imacs, on is leopard and the other mavericks (both imacs).

Many thanks to you all!
 

theluggage

macrumors 604
Jul 29, 2011
7,463
7,286
Hi,
I want to use my two macs to work together, how do i do that? they are both imacs, on is leopard and the other mavericks (both imacs).
Many thanks to you all!

Target display mode (mentioned in MeValonicAcid's post) is probably the best solution. If (as seems likely) one of your iMacs is Thunderbolt and the older one is MiniDisplayPort then you'll have to use the older one as the 'second monitor' but that's probably what you want anyway.

If that doesn't float your boat for any reason, here are two 'not quite what you asked for' alternatives.

Synergy lets you control two (or more) networked computers (Mac, PC/Bootcamp or linux) from one keyboard and mouse - you just move the mouse pointer off the edge of one screen and it appears on the other. You're still using two computers - e.g. you can't drag windows or files between screens, although basic cut & paste works, but it's ideal if (for example) you want to use one screen for reading documentation or displaying source material.

USP: unlike Target Display Mode, it doesn't hide the desktop of the 'display' machine, great if you've got some leopard-only software that you want to use alongside Mavericks. Works with Bootcamp on either or both machines.

One caveat: you''l need to download the latest 'nightly' to get it to work on Mavericks - or wait a bit.

ScreenRecycler lets you use any computer as a second display for a Mac. Not nearly as good as a 'proper' second monitor, because everything gets compressed and sent over the network so the update on the second display is quite slow so you're not going to run graphics software, games or videos on it but, again, if you just need some extra real estate for parking reference material it is fine.

USP: Mainly if you've run out of Thunderbolt/Displayport sockets, or want to use a Thunderbolt iMac as the 'target display' for a Displayport one..

Synergy is free, ScreenRecycler isn't - I think its a bit overpriced for what it does, but there's nothing else that does quite that job and I've no idea how difficult it was to implement, so fair's fair.
 

theluggage

macrumors 604
Jul 29, 2011
7,463
7,286
Synergy now work with Mavericks

Current release version from synergy-foss.org doesn't (without some messy command-line fu). That'd be why the website says 'Mac OS X Mavericks support coming soon!'. As I said, you need one of the 'nightly builds' - which carries the usual health warning about relying on a 'nightly build' of anything.
 
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