How do I set up my old G3 PBs and a Sawtooth?

Question

My Wallstreet 233 had sat on my shelf for the last 5 years after I had thought that the Power Manager had burned due to a faulty adapter output. I recently got an old 266 which had an original apple mains adapter, and lo and behold the old PB came alive. After 5 years gathering dust, I've now 2 working Wallstreets with one working ac adapter and, after a quick battery reset, 2 batteries with 3 hours charge each.
Then, a week later I was given a 500mhz Sawtooth. So now I have 2PBs and a PMac.
I've got them up and running on 10.2.8
What will the best way of setting up these at home? I want to use the 266PB for internet (browsing, blogging, skype, itunes and limewire), I'm happy to use PB233 for ms office and as disk backup that may boot up other PB. I want to update PMac for video editing, graphics and playing movies. I have Maxtor to backup PMac.
Can I boot up one pb using another pb's hdd? Is SCSI the only way to do this?
I also want to network all these machines, preferably wlan. What's simplest way of doing this?
BTW I have a LaCie USB2/FW Combo PC card which has a 12V power socket, sadly I don't have power switcher. There's no record of it on LaCie's site and it's CD only mentions Orange Micro which has proved futile. When inserted into PC Card slot it appears on menu bar - "vendor unknown" and "host controller" greyed out and eject disk in bold. When I connect disgo usb it flashes but doesn't mount. I've checked on disk utility and it shows disk not mounted, but apple profiler doesn't show anything different. Is this correct?
PB G3 266MHz 512mb 20G, PB G3 233Mhz 128mb 10Gb, & PMac 500Mhz 512mb 120Gb   Mac OS X (10.2.x)  

Answer 1

Full excerpt (it's long sorry) of Installation guide on LaCie CD for Combo USB/FW PC Card reads:
Installing USB Drivers
USB 2.0 Hi-Speed support is available on MAC OS X. When running on the OS X system, USB
2.0 Hi-Speed will have a data transfer rate of 480 Mbits/s. When running on the OS 8.6 and OS 9
USB will have data transfer rate of up to 12 Mbits/s.
Users can connect USB and USB 2.0 Hi-Speed peripherals to a USB 2.0 Hi-Speed port. The
current USB peripherals will continue to have a data transfer rate of 12 Mbits/s while USB 2.0 Hi-
Speed peripherals will have a data transfer rate of 480 Mbits/s if Mac OS X is currently running.
NOTE: Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X come with USB 1.1 support preinstalled and it is not
necessary to download and install Apple USB drivers.
Mac OS X users
After the USB 2.0 card is installed, log into Mac OS X with a username and password that has
administrative access.
Download the OrangeUSBInstaller from: (http://www.orangemicro.com/updateusb2mac.html)
• Double click on OrangeUSBInstaller.pkg icon
• If the installer displays the message “Administrative access is required to
continue”, click on the Lock icon.
• You will then be prompted to enter the administrator password. If the account
you are using does not have administrative access, you must enter the username
and password for an account that does or you will NOT be able to install
OrangeUSB EHCI support!
• If you have administrative access, the
“Welcome to the OrangeUSB Drivers
Installer” window will appear. Click on the
Continue button.
• The “Select a Destination” dialog (Fig. 2)
will appear. Select the active Mac OS X
system drive, then click “Continue”.
Figure 1
• The “Easy Install” dialog will appear. Click
on the “Install” button to install OrangeUSB
Drivers.
• Click on the ”Restart” button to finish the
installation, when prompted.
Figure 2
Finalizing USB 2.0 Hi-Speed hardware settings
USB 2.0 Hi-Speed products that use an NEC chipset have 3 USB host controller engines on
board. Two of the host controller engines handle USB 1.1 transactions. One of the host
controllers engines handle, USB 2.0 transactions.
USB data traffic is automatically routed to the proper host controller engine depending on the
speed of the device that is plugged into the USB port. This essentially creates 3 concurrent USB
buses. These USB buses allow devices to run in a less congested traffic environment. This helps
devices such as color printers, scanners, video cameras and mass storage devices, which
require a high bandwidth, to work well together.
The NEC PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller driver handles USB 2.0 Hi-Speed (480 Mbits/s)
traffic. The two NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controllers handle Full-Speed (12 Mb/s) and Low-
Speed (1.5 Mb/s) traffic.
Confirm proper installation of USB 2.0 Hi-Speed driver:
Verify the “OMI_EHCI.kext” Extension is located in the Mac OS X /System/Library/Extensions/
directory.
Verify the USB 2.0 Host Controller is detected:
Open the Apple System Profiler located in the Mac OS X /Applications/Utilities folder. Then click
on the “Devices and Volumes” tab.
In the example below slot B1 contains two “pci12ee, 7000” entries and one “pci12ee, 7001” entry.
The “pci12ee, 7000” represents the two NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controllers and the
“pci12ee, 7001” represents the one NEC PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller.
If all three appear, the USB 2.0 Host Controller has been detected.
Congratulations! Your Macintosh is now ready to use your FireWire and USB devices. To install
a specific FireWire or USB device, please consult your device manufacturer’s documentation.
Troubleshooting USB
Problem:
I plug in a USB device and the Mac OS X system freezes.
Solution:
On beige G3 Macintosh computers, Mac OS X may attempt to load the built-in USB OHCI drivers
for the EHCI controller. Orange Micro has worked out a patch to solve this problem. It is located
on the OrangeUSB Installer CD in the G3 USB 2.0 Patch folder.
Problem:
I have a pre-G3 Power Macintosh computer, an OrangeUSB and the USB drivers seem to be
installed properly but I cannot get any devices to work. Why?
Solution:
The OrangeUSB PCI board is compatible with the Macintosh All-in-one G3, Power Macintosh
Beige G3 rev. B or later, Power Macintosh Blue & White G3, and Power Macintosh G4 series
computers. There is an incompatibility between the OrangeUSB 2.0 PCI board and all other PCI
based Macintosh computers. The OrangeLink+ USB 2.0/FireWire PCI board does function in pre-
G3 Power Macs so you may consider using it in place of the OrangeUSB 2.0 card.
Problem:
How can I tell if my Power Macintosh Beige G3 is rev. B or later?
Use the Apple System Profiler, located in the Apple menu, to help determine which logic board
revision you have. Open Apple System Profiler, click the System Profile tab within the window,
and then look at the Production Information section. Compare it to the table below to determine
which revision of the logic board is in your Power Macintosh G3 (platinum) computer.
ROM Logic Board
Versions Revision
$77D.40F2 revision A
$77D.45F1 revision B
$77D.45F2 revision C.
Problem:
What PCI based Power Macintosh Computers are NOT compatible with the OrangeUSB PCI
board?
Solution:
Power Macintosh 54xx, 55xx, 64xx, 65xx, 72xx, 73xx, 7500, 85xx, 86xx, 95xx, 96xx, Twentieth
Anniversary Macintosh, Power Macintosh G3 Beige rev A and all Macintosh clones.
Where to go for additional Troubleshooting assistance?
Visit the OrangeUSB Windows troubleshooting web site.
http://www.orangemicro.com/orangeusbmacfaqs.html
Contact Orange Micro for technical support.
http://www.orangemicro.com/supportform.html
Now it is probably clear that LaCie pc card is NEC chipset based on clone of orangemicro. Now I have googled the OMI_EHCI driver and found that it is fine up to and including 10.2.6 but 10.2.8 may behave strangely. I guess it must not be liked by native apple usb driver.
http://www.macally.com/techsupport/faq/faq_usb2controller.html
Have you any suggestions?
PB G3 266MHz 512mb 20G, PB G3 233Mhz 128mb 10Gb, & PMac 500Mhz 512mb 120Gb Mac OS X (10.2.x)