Not to worry ...

I sell a USB to Ethernet adapter (exclusively) here on eBay for just this purpose ... saving you 100's of dollars, downtime, and most imprtantly maintaining your investment and keeping you networked and online!

Here's the info from the auction:

Save a costly motherboard repair for your Apple All In One iMac or eMac or your iBook & Powerbook

EXCLUSIVE - I am the only one to offer this adapter for OS 9 (Classic) * PLEASE email me for details

This is for your surged ethernet/broadband port on your Apple computer

USB 2.0 ... backwards compatible with USB 1.1

Comes complete with drivers in pack with manual

PLEASE EMAIL ME with any questions or for OS 9 compatibility ...

This adapter ONLY works with OS 9.2.2 with all updates applied OR Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) or Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) and All versions of Windows that support USB

Note: this adapter does not work with OS 8.6 - 9.2.1 or 10 or 10.1 or 10.2

Best compatibility and guaranteed to work with Panther, Tiger, and Windows 2000, Windows Millenium, and Windows XP ... all other operating systems are not guaranteed ... but please email me for details. And here's a little more information:

Install appropriate drivers (labelled)

In Mac OS9:

Go to Apple Menu/Control Panels/TCPIP

Change your port to PN796 or Farallon Ethernet Adapter

Save

Connect

In OS X:

While drivers are provided for 10.2 Jaguar ... drivers may not work.

In 10.3 or 10.4:

Go to Apple Menu/System Preferences/Network

After drivers are installed upon opening Network Preference Panel you should see something similar to "New Port Detected EN02Adapter"

Click ok

Click on configure

Configure TCIP appropriately

You are connected

You can also use this adapter seperately as an ethernet print server.

For more help go to the website XLR8YOURMAC.COM ... there is a wealth of knowledge and more drivers for this adapter.

Although I say in the auction that this adapter will not work with 10.1 or 10.2 - there are drivers on the Cd for this adapter ... they are very hard to get to work.

Although I say 9.2.2 compatibility and provide firmware and the 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 updater on a CD - getting these to work in OS 9 is a very hard thing to do as OS 9 handled TCP/IP data completely differently.

Another cool tidbit is that you can transform a USB hub into an ethernet router with multiple adapters. Meaning a (4) port USB hub could be a (4) port ethernet router with (4) of these adapters ... pretty cool aye?

If any of you have gotten to this page AFTER buying the adapter and you find that the drivers don't load or you need updated drivers ... you can simply google for "USB Pegasus Mac" - that will yield several pages to download new drivers.