Lets go back in time.....

Icicle · Dec 29, 2005

A friend of mine just got an older laptop, one of the armored ones that the military uses (or used) its a cyrix chip running a whopping 266 Mhz and Windows 98....

Were gonna use it as a database and VIN/Parts decoder for using in our local pick and pull junkyard (Im a car nut and a computer nut, strange combo I know)

Getting to the meat an potatoes here..... any ideas on what will happen if I connect a USB cable from my Mac to that computer? will mine just recognize it as a HDD?

Or will it even connect at all? it doesnt have an ethernet port.... Yet....

Do we have ANY compatibility here?

just insanely curious.....

baggss · Dec 29, 2005

Does the thing even have a USB port? If so, I don't remember if Win98 even supported USB. Assuming that those two things are true, then no, it won't recognize your mac as a hard Drive. You'll need to enable Windows File-sharing on the Mac and whatever the Win98 equivalent is, assuming that there is one.

inflexion · Dec 29, 2005

you would be better of installing something like debian linux on there rather than windows

Icicle · Dec 29, 2005

baggss said:
Does the thing even have a USB port? If so, I don't remember if Win98 even supported USB. Assuming that those two things are true, then no, it won't recognize your mac as a hard Drive. You'll need to enable Windows File-sharing on the Mac and whatever the Win98 equivalent is, assuming that there is one.

Yes it has USB 1

Yes win 98 supports USB

I dont want it to recognize my Mac as a hard drive, I want my Mac to recognize it as a Hard drive

inflexion said:
you would be better of installing something like debian linux on there rather than windows

I have Slackware CD's, but it doesnt have an optical drive, so thats one of the reasons for my questions, aside from extreme curiosity.

It isnt my computer anyway, so the decision about the OS isnt up to me, but FWIW I agree with you :black:

baggss · Dec 29, 2005

Icicle said:
I dont want it to recognize my Mac as a hard drive, I want my Mac to recognize it as a Hard drive

Don't think that will happen. I thinkl the best you can hope for is to share a folder on the PC side.

inflexion · Dec 30, 2005

yup thats the best option but if you want to install linux then you can always do an install over ethernet if it has the port?

D3v1L80Y · Dec 30, 2005

Icicle said:
what will happen if I connect a USB cable from my Mac to that computer?

Absolutely nothing.

will mine just recognize it as a HDD?

No.

Do we have ANY compatibility here?

If by compatibility, you mean that your Mac will be able to "see" your laptop somehow, then yes.
Like what has been mentioned already, the only way you are going to be able to see the laptop from your Mac, is to someway or another connect to it via a network. You would have to set up some sort of shared folder on the laptop, so the Mac could connect to that.
No, you would not have to use linux, you could still use Windows 98...but as you stated that is not up to you to make that call.

:black: