Modem for an old Mac?

luckat

I've a friend who has an old G4 (500MHz, April 2000 make). He's running MacOS 9 on it, because he uses it mainly for Quark documents.

He'd like to have a modem so he can send and receive email.

Could the kindly experts of Boards.ie please recommend a suitable, trouble-free, Mac-friendly modem? Preferably USB, but a PCI card if (sigh) necessary.

(I'm trying to persuade him to get a modern MacBook, but he's not feeling up to it right now. And broadband isn't an option.)

Oriel

Check the apple store, they do their own USB modem.

luckat

Nope, no good, sinecurea - it says 'minimum requirements mac os x'.

uncle_sam_ie

Are you sure it doesn't already have a built in modem?

BostonB

Seem hard to find alright. best results I got was on "Apple 56k modem" in google.

ZENER

If it doesn't have a modem built in already - check the system profiler from the Apple menu in OS9 - I think I have one here in a PowerMac G4 of that era that you can have.

The modem for those machines was a small matchbox sized board that mounted on the main logic board. Screwdriver and nerves required !!

I'll have a look in the morning and post again if I can find it. This really is the best option for maximum compatability.

ZEN

luckat

Zen, thanks very much. I may also have an offer of an external moden from the same era; but I'm not sure what the 'modem connection' of that era looked like. I have a vague memory that it was a kind of little square serial-ish thing; am I right?

ZENER

This is kind of what the internal G4 modem looks like. I've never seen a recent external modem that works with OS9 although I used to have an ADB Bus external 28.8 modem for a PowerPC Mac special edition Anniversary model, it was a long white box about 3 inces by 1.

I'll have a look later for the internal one, meanwhile if you could check in system profiler for the exact model of the Power Mac it would help to narrow it down - different models used different modems. This is the model I have here with the modem in it.

Let me know.

ZEN

luckat

I checked the serial number on the Mac identifier site

http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html

and it came up with the fact that it was a PowerMac 500MHz model introduced in 1999, and this particular one was made in April 2000.

What is the modem? It looks like a PCI card, but doesn't have the little metallic teethy thing on one edge.

I have myself used external modems with OS 9 (and indeed OS 7!) but this model *apparently* doesn't have the right connector for the 5-pin square little plug.

luckat

Hmm. My old modem (which my neighbour still had from the ancient 6800 I gave or sold him years ago) has a kind of PS2 type connector, and his G4 Power Macintosh doesn't have that connection.

It does have a hole in the back with a graphic of a phone beside it, so I suspect that an internal modem of some sort may work with it; I'm told that your modem, Zen, is not in fact a PCI card but a specialised one that fits into its own dedicated slot. Perhaps this phone graphic is where its RJ11 pokes out when it's installed.

If you'd be so kind as to wait a few days, my neighbour is going to consult with the eastern European printers to whom he supplies camera-ready copy. He's currently working in Quark (hence his reluctance to move to OS X), but if the printers say they can work with InDesign he might buy a MacBook and move on up to InDesign, solving all our problems.

It would be even handier if Macs were cheaper in eastern Europe, of course, but perhaps that's too much to hope for.

ZENER

Probably stating the obvious here but why not just get Quark for OSX ?

Anyway have you checked inside the PowerMac to see if their is a modem in there ? Maccs that didn't have the modem built in usually had the RJ11 port covered, can be bought here too.

The modem is a small board a little larger than a matchbox and is usually mounted near the power connector on older G4 PowerMacs.

ZEN