03-05-2010, 10:13 PM

Okay so dig into your memory banks and put on your thinken caps.

So i have an old sawtooth g4 400 desktop that i have recently dug out of my back room since my main windows machine bit the dust. I'm buying a new one but it will be a few weeks before I get it. Now, the sawtooth was my fathers machine way back when and I inherited it a while back. I know he connected using airport but for various reasons I use hard line Ethernet. Now the sawtooth runs 10.2.8 and of course I don't have any of the relevant system disks.

So.

After the windows machine died i figured i could use the old mac to check email and other basic internet tasks until the new comp arrived. I connect it, boot it, everything looks good. I open safari and .. no server connection. I look at the internet control and everything seems fine using DHCP and all that on the built in Ethernet. I ping various servers, traceroute, no problems. Run safari... nothing. I dig out my old Toughbook, connect to the network, no problems. I do some research. It seems that this is a known problem with 10.2.8 and this particular mac and find a solution on the apple site. I dump it into my flash drive, transfer it to the mac, run it. reboot. boot safari... no server.

So I'm sort of at a loss here. The update i downloaded and installed was supposed to fix this (build is the latest 675 maybe? I'm at a friends house) the thing i got was an update for Ethernet and some battery monitor. I assume this is the right one. I guess, from reading, that the problem lies in the appleGMACEthernet.kext file that is now v1.3.0 instead of the old v1.2.4. Now, the solution is, download the fix(which didn't work or I don't know which one to get) or manually replace the new kext file with the old(which i don't have since the disks are lost to time and distance and this is such an old problem that all the links to the file in question don't exist anymore) So I am the proverbial impasse. I have two weeks or more before the new computer comes in. I know dad never ran into this problem as he used the airport to connect and I don't have that option. The toughbook is even more of a dinosaur than the mac and I really don't like connecting it to the internet anyway (I am hellishly paranoid about the data on it, for basically no reason but hey when you live by yourself you get quirky after a while.) I want to use the mac for internet in the interim but such a thing seems out of the question at the moment. The frustrating thing is that the ping and traceroute work fine, so i know the internal card isn't broken. If i wait for half an hour or more the connection works okay for one page (i.e. it took 45 minutes to load the google main page but it did appear to load.) I can rework the cable modem so that it connects from usb, but of course i cant find the relevant software for that either. I really don't know what else to do at this point. I really don't want to use the toughbook and even if i do it's so old that it hardly works in any case.

So... am I just hosed or is there something I am not seeing? I would really appreciate any help anyone could give.

03-05-2010, 10:45 PM

Hook the modem throw a hub. You just got something not set up right. The machine should work just fine...Hey Im posting right now with an 8600 (G3) with OS9.2

03-05-2010, 11:03 PM

it is, in fact, through a hub. The settings are automatic DHCP, I even went through the trouble of defining my DNS severs(It didn't work when i didn't define them, I doesn't work with them defined) I manually input the the info, no results, automatic, no results. If it were a simple settings problem I would have figured that out in the last two days. Through research, I have seen that the problem apparently lies in the 10.2.8 applegmacethernet.kext file. This(was) a known problem(they pulled the update just after release) But i can't seem to fix it with the provided update. (ethernet drivers and battery monitor for 10.2.8 is what i got) nor do i have the old file to substitute. If the were a simple thing I would have solved it already(unless I am truly retarded, not outside the realm of the possible)So. I don't think it is a simple configuration issue, as i'm pretty sure I've tried all the possible configurations. Also, with DHCP and DNS inputed, traceroute and ping work fine, something(I assume) would not be true if it was a simple misconfiguration. The PC works fine through the same HUB(and wire) with automatic settings. I want the mac to work because it's (supposedly) a better machine.


Also, before you ask, I have reset everything in order(modem, router,hub, comp) to no avail and a number of times.

03-05-2010, 11:12 PM

Sounds like the OS is corrupt.

03-05-2010, 11:20 PM

Also, relavent info here: Troubleshooting (pulled) Mac OS X 10.2.8 (#3): Detailed Ethernet instructions; MOTU; more | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews


and what i got is this: Apple - Downloads - Mac OS X Updates - Mac OS X Update (Ethernet and Battery Patch) 10.2.8

which didn't help

03-05-2010, 11:28 PM

Everything else seems to work fine.