By William Ove <wove@mnic.net>

Much ado is made over fancy networking these days, however for simple sharing using a printer cable this will do the trick.

1) Make sure both Macs have the necessary software. This will vary slightly with the different system revisions.

2) From the Main Mac, turn on Apple talk.

3) From the Main Mac, select Sharing Setup (control panel). If not present in the network identity section, type in your name. Start File sharing. It takes a couple minutes to get going. Close the control panel.

4) From the Main Mac select the hard drive you wish to share. One click is all don't open it.

5) From the Main Mac select "Sharing. . ." from the Finder's File Menu.

Make the selection you desire in the box that appears

6) From the Main Mac select Users and Groups control Panel. Click the Face icon labeled Guest and check the "Allow guests to connect" check box in the dialog box that appears.

7) Plug your second Mac into the Main Mac using the printer cable.

8) From the Second Mac turn on Apple Talk.

9) From the Second Mac open the "Chooser". Select the "Apple Share" icon. At this point the name of your Main Mac should appear in the window. Double click this name.

10) In the window that will appear click the "Guest" button. Click "OK" and close the "Chooser"

An Icon of the hard drive of the Main Mac should now appear on your Second Macs Desktop. Make an "alias" of that and leave it on your desktop. From then on anytime you connect to the running Main Mac which has AppleTalk active, the sharing connection will become established when ever you double click the alias of the Main Mac's hard drive you have created on the Second Mac.

You simply follow the directions again reversing the Main Mac and Second Mac to create an alias of the Second Mac's hard drive on the Main Mac. Once you have created an alias of the others hard drive on their desktops, you can start two way sharing by simply double clicking the aliases.

This is actually quite handy and not as difficult to do as it is to describe.

William Ove