What piece of hardware do I need to...

[felo500]

I need to transfer files from a pc to a mac and I'm simply not looking forward to burning 20 cd's . What is the best cable I could buy to transfer about 5 gigs of data from a pc (dell dimension) to an imac intel?

any input is appreciated

[nixgeek]

If both computers have ethernet ports, an ethernet crossover cable would be the simplest way to connect them together. Enable file sharing on the WIndows computer and access it from the Mac (if you're running OS X Jaguar at the very least). Just be sure to give them the appropriate IP addresses (192.168.1.1 and 192.168.2.2, for example, with subnet mask 255.255.255.0 for both addresses).

I just transferred 8 GB of data just a few minutes ago from one PC to my Mac in a similar manner over my home network.

[felo500]

thank you so much.

What is the difference between crossover cable and reguler CAT5?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

A regular CAT5 is usually called a "twisted-pair" cable because one pair of wires is twisted, so-to-speak: the pin that the wire originates from on one end goes into a different pin on the other computer, and vice-versa for the second wire... a "crossover" cable does not have the same pair of wires twisted; rather, they go "straight through" if you will.

Most modern Macintosh computers can auto-change this setting on the fly, negating the need for a crossover cable -- you can either use one or a regular CAT5 cable to directly connect two Macs that support this auto-switching ethernet thing. Older Macs cannot do this, and therefore need the crossover cable to function correctly. Since you're using a PC and we don't know wether the PC can auto-switch like the Mac, using a crossover cable will work no matter what.

[SatCure]

I think you misunderstand the meaning of "twisted pair". Each pair of wires is twisted together to minimise their susceptibility to interference and also to minimise the amount of signal they transmit in any one direction.