Urgent!!! New iMac users needs help!!

JohnnyV

JohnnyV

Registered
I have a friend who just a new iMac!! She want to use it in OS X, but her PC-using family has a Farallon Homeline network to connect to the internet. As you may know, Farallon discontinued their mac support for Homeline products!! Is there ANY way to connect the this "network" (I quote that cause I don't really consider it a network:p )?? It is an adaptor that connects to the USB port on the macintosh and then to a card in the may PC using DCHP. If there is some way of doing this through the terminal could you PLEASE let me know?? I have found no way to get USB and DCHP in the same set-up under the network settings:(

Please help, we don't want to lose a Mac user (she talked about selling it if we can't get it working!!):eek:




Any Help would be great!!
 
A network using USB? I'm sorry but that's just inane. All I can think is that they're trying to force some non-standard NIC card on you or something.

If standard TCP/IP signals are sent over the line though I assume there's some converter along the way that converts the signals for USB. Just cut the cable before the device (or splice it and use a hub so that the PC can use the line with the converter and the Mac not). It's not to hard to put a male RJ-45 head on the line, although it requires some technical knowledge (like wire order and how to not degrade the signal)... I'm sure you can find someone to do it or just ask here and I'll post some detailed instructions. Then just plug the cable into the Mac's ethernet card.

Again, that's assuming though the cable uses a standard TCP/IP signal. The Mac should pick up the signal and configure itself.

I can't think of any software solution though... some complete "err... maybe if this and this..." guesses, but that's about it. Seems like you'd have to know how the signal was converted though, which is probably proprietary.

Cheers,
Dak
 
Originally posted by JohnnyV
Please help, we don't want to lose a Mac user (she talked about selling it if we can't get it working!!):eek:
Click to expand...

Well we wont be losing one, it'll kinda just be a shift. ;)
 
If standard TCP/IP signals are sent over the line though I assume there's some converter along the way that converts the signals for USB. Just cut the cable before the device (or splice it and use a hub so that the PC can use the line with the converter and the Mac not). It's not to hard to put a male RJ-45 head on the line, although it requires some technical knowledge (like wire order and how to not degrade the signal)... I'm sure you can find someone to do it or just ask here and I'll post some detailed instructions. Then just plug the cable into the Mac's ethernet card.
Click to expand...


I mentioned this to my friend before posting, and she said to give it a try, but could you post some instructions please? I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron;)
 
I doubt you'd be able to just cut the wire and make it work. If it's USB it must be running some proprietary protocol.

Your best bet will be to find out if they make an ethernet converter that could be used.

And this, my friends, is why Apple stresses standards.
 
Originally posted by dricci
I doubt you'd be able to just cut the wire and make it work. If it's USB it must be running some proprietary protocol.

Your best bet will be to find out if they make an ethernet converter that could be used.

And this, my friends, is why Apple stresses standards.
Click to expand...

and that my friends is why Apple should support more than 802.11b & bluetooth.
 
This is a bit off topic to the original post, but what other "standards" are there for apple to support except for 802.11b/g/whatever-else-there-is, Bluetooth, Ethernet, and 56k modems? Those seem to be the only ones I ever hear about these days....
Homeline is also far from a standard. It's a hacked up, proprietary protocol, and nobody uses it but Farallon.

Two standards Apple does need to include: DDR RAM and HyperTransport :p
 
Wow, I didn't think people bought that trash. There is no amount of splicing that will get this working on your friend's system. If she honestly thinks that a stupid proprietary hack is worth selling her iMac, then it is really her loss.

I wouldn't personally throw out that particular baby with the bathwater because of a much less expensive piece of networking hardware.
 
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