mac folks... need to put an ethernet card in one

[TurboMirage]

brand new mac pro

need to add a NIC. i picked up PCI Express Gigabit card but there is nowhere to plug it in!

any idea where i can find a PCI card? i cant find shit for this POS.

 

[Briansol]

wait, brand new macs don't even come with an rj45 port? lolololol

 

[TurboMirage]

they come with two.....

i need a 3rd one.

 

[Briansol]

get a router. lol

 

[TurboMirage]

You mean a switch?

We've been trying to pass gigabytes sized files between the Mac Pro and a pair of huge format printers. It just isn't working. We are usin a gigabit switch in between. Wanted to try eliminating that from the equation. Apple is far from helpful on our problem and the older Mac Pro has no issues previously with the large files.

 

[GSRCRXsi]

Have you tried it one just one printer first? To see if that will even solve your issue?

 

[TurboMirage]

this is the setup. the mac pro rips CMYK data over the LAN to the 2 printers. the 2 printers are connected via a switch to the mac.

port 1 of the mac is LAN / internet
port 2 goes to a new gigabit 5-port switch, which has 2 ports out, one going to each printer which are windows boxes. both printers, and the second port on the mac are all static set at .190 .191 and .192 . the printers do not require network or internet access past the mac.

we had to get a new mac pro since the old one is 3+ years old and out of applecare, plus it is snow leopard and does not support our recently upgraded caldera9 to run the grand rip software needed to push the data out.

 

[TurboMirage]

Have you tried it one just one printer first? To see if that will even solve your issue?

unfortunately i cannot since both printers run most of the day, any and all downtime has to happen either before the shop opens, or after close. in the meantime they have been grabbing half the files and copying them, then the other half of the folder.

 

[GSRCRXsi]

then go in early or stay late and test it lol. it would be better than putting a card in only to find out it doesnt work lol.

 

[TurboMirage]

well for the fuck of it i did that Friday afternoon. still times out. even worse i cant ping it from the MAC but i can ping the MAC from the PC. if i put the switch back inline, i can ping both ways.

i cut the end on the cable to make it a crossover, same problem. fucking macs are a nightmare for small networking.

the only thing i can think to do is put both printer pcs on the network and give them static addresses - but then they may be really slow (the networks is half 100 half 1000 due to the idiots in before me).

 

[GSRCRXsi]

why would giving them static IPs make them slow?

 

[TurboMirage]

there is a shit ton of network traffic and the network over there is already super congested and these 3 machines are the biggest data users (gigs of files, daily) which is why we've always kept them separate.