Mac to PC using VNC over a crossover cable?

May 25, 2006 11:07 PM

I have a G5 running MacOS 10.4 and a very old Win98 Compaq that has a certain sound card required for a piece of Generative Music software by Brian Eno. I have a wireless network at home for the mac, but the PC does not have a wireless card. Can I connect the Mac and the PC via an ethernet crossover cable and control the PC from the Mac?
posted by tonyballinger to computers & internet (7 comments total)

You don't even need a crossover cable, the G5's ethernet port will automatically detect that it is connected to another computer rather than a network switch.

As far as controlling the compaq, you will need something like VNC.
posted by b1tr0t at 11:15 PM on May 25, 2006

I'm having reasonably good luck using Microsoft's Remote Desktop as well.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:39 AM on May 26, 2006

In case this wasn't blindingly obvious, you will need to give each machine a static IP address for the crossover to work, assuming they're currently set for DHCP or something similar.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 5:48 AM on May 26, 2006

As mentioned, a crossover or straight-through ethernet cable will work. However, you don't need to assign both computers static IP addresses if they are already using DHCP. Both Apple's and Microsoft's DHCP client implementations use a "failover" autoconfigure IP address space from which an IP is self-assigned when a valid DHCP server cannot be located. This address will be in the 169.254.x.x network.
posted by pmbuko at 6:11 AM on May 26, 2006

Further details:

For this to work nicely, you need to do a couple things. In the Network preferences (in the System Preferences), choose Network Port Configurations from the Show menu. Drag Airport to the top of the list, and put Built-in Ethernet just below it. This will ensure that when you want to get out to the internet your computer will choose the right interface.

Now choose Built-in Ethernet from the Show menu and tell it to use DHCP, leaving all the other fields blank. If you want the Windows box to be able to use the internet "through" your Mac, then go to the Sharing preferences, click the Internet tab, choose Airport from the menu, and check the Built-in Ethernet box.

On the Windows box, set TCP/IP to use DHCP as well. Both computers should self-assign an IP address and should be able to communicate with each other.

Now, you just need to install a VNC server on the Win98 box and a VNC viewer on the Mac.
posted by pmbuko at 6:29 AM on May 26, 2006

I forgot to mention that you need to click the Start button after configuring the internet sharing.
posted by pmbuko at 6:30 AM on May 26, 2006

Have you tried emulating Win98 with Q? It may not be as fast as using a VNC, but it eliminates the need to keep that old laptop around.
posted by Monochrome at 8:42 PM on May 29, 2006 [1 favorite]