Monitor Issue

My home desktop computer is an iMac. However, I have an older Mac computer that has no monitor but is storing some very important information. Is there any way to hook my iMac up to this older PC, in order to view the contents of the older PC over the iMac's monitor screen? I know it's possible to do this with other computers, but since all of the iMac's wires and cables are internal...I'm at a loss.

Thanks!

~Heather

Depends on how old it is. If it's fairly recent (someone here can probably say how recent it needs to be), you can boot the older Mac holding down the "T" key after stringing a firewire cable between it and your new Mac. Keep holding it until you see the older Mac's drive show up on your iMac's desktop. You can then copy your files from the old Mac, then simply hold its power button until it shuts down.

Sounds like it's worth a try. How do I string a firewall cable between the two? Heck, do I even own a firewall cable? What is that exactly?

Thanks!

Here is an example of a firewire cable. You'd need a 6-pin to 6-pin cable (there are a lot of 4-pin to 6-pin cables out there which is what you would use, for example, to connect a DV camera).

Before you spend the money though, what model is your older Mac? That way we can see if it supports "Target Disk Mode" (which is what you get when you boot a modern Mac with the "T" key held down).

It's a Power Mac, model 6500/250 - does that help?

Thanks so much!

This page of the 6500's specs says your Mac was

introduced 1997.02.17, discontinued 1998.03.14

Click to expand...

But this page says Firewire was introduced in late 1998. There's no mention of Firewire on the 6500 specs page, so don't buy a cable.

I believe Firewire wasn't introduced until the G3 Mac, and quite certain it's not available on your 6500 (I have a 7600 and it's definitely not on that machine).

The only other option I can think of would be an ethernet connection between the two machines (preferably with a router/switch in-between, otherwise you'll need to find an ethernet crossover cable), but without a monitor on your 6500, it would be near impossible to configure. You might have to borrow a monitor to facilitate this.

The 6500 (I believe) also used SCSI hard drives, so pulling the drive and sticking it in an external case isn't really much of an option either. I was lucky in that I had an external SCSI CD burner available when I decommissioned my 7600 a few years ago and was able to not only burn the files on my hard drive, but also compiling my old 3.5" floppies onto a CDR.

Perhaps someone else could have better advice...