How to check network port on an old iMac?

[BlueberryMac]

Hi, my mom has an old (2006?) iMac
(one of the white iPod-looking ones with a 1.83 Intel Core 2 Duo processor).

She has been using her Brother HL-2170W laser printer just fine, but sometime in the last couple of weeks it's stopped working for her.

Thinking something might be wrong with the printer itself, I took my MacBook Pro over to her house and plugged it into the printer—it worked fine.

So now I am thinking that either the printer driver software got hosed somehow, or maybe the network port it is connected to (the ethernet socket, I believe) has died.

When I use the printer utility thing on her machine it says that it can't connect to the printer.

Anyway, is there a piece of software that would allow me to test to see if her ethernet port is still working?

I know if she had a way to connect to the internet by ethernet cord, I could try that to see if the port was working, but she gets free wireless at the place she lives so she has no access to routers or cords or anything—just the WiFi signal.

Can I connect my MacBook Pro to her iMac via a standard ethernet cable? I recall years and years ago doing something like this to move files to a Tangerine iMac, but back then it had to be a special "crossover cable"... not sure if things have progressed so that standard ethernet cables can be used...

Anyway, any ideas of either hardware checking software or how to check using my MBP?

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

 

[DewGuy1999]

You should be able to connect the 2 Macs with a standard Ethernet cable and share files to see if the port is working. I think a crossover cable was only required for the G3 PowerPC Macs and earlier. Here's a Apple Doc on setting up file sharing if you need it:

Mac 101: File sharing