Inherit backups in a unique migration situation

We had two Macs running Snow Leopard. Old Mac A (2006 MacBook Pro 17") was connected direclty to an external drive and used Time Machine there. Old Mac B (2006 MacBook 13") mounted the same drive to use for Time Machine backups by first connecting to Old Mac A across the network, and so its Time Machine backup was stored in a sparsebundle on that drive.
We upgrade both Macs, New Mac A (2012 MacBook Pro 15") replacing Old Mac A, New Mac B (2012 Mac Mini) repalcing Old Mac B. However, because of some changes we wanted to make, the Time Machine backup drive is now connected directly to New Mac B (stationary Mini allowing it to stay connected permanently).
I discovered information in places like http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html and http://simon.heimlicher.com/articles/2012/07/10/time-machine-inherit-backup-usin g-tmutil that pointed me to tmutil which could help me with inheritbackup and associatedisk. However, New Mac A was not able to inherit Old Mac A's backup across the network, and I'm concerned more generally about the fact that the machine's have swapped roles in terms of which one is connected directly and which is connected across the network.
Any advice on exactly what steps I should take to properly connect New Mac A to Old Mac A's Time Machine Backup, and New Mac B to Old Mac B's? Could this possibly include moving Old Mac A's backup into a new sparsebundle (for use across a network) and/or moving Old Mac B's backup out of its sparsebundle to the drive's root directory (for use with a direct-connected drive)?

The pondini.org link says that sometimes the associatedisk command will work over a network. More importantly, the only reason I even disocvered there was such a thing as the possibility of inheriting a backup is that when I first connected the external drive to the Mini, fully expecting to have to start a new TM backup from scratch, TM suddenly popped up asking me if I wanted to inherit the backup. It found it on its own, somehow knew there was an association between the backup set and the data on its on drive (which I had restored via Setup Assistant), even though the backup it had found now direct-connected was the very same one that was in a sparsebundle and used to only be run across the network.
I haven't yet allowed the computer to actually backup, since I wanted to be sure about everything being connected/inherited/associated properly first. However, the fact that TM found that used-to-be-across-the-network backup on its own, asked me to inherit it, and the fact that I did successfully run the inheritbackup command on the Mini, all lead me to believe that there is somewhat more to the story than what you just said, even if that may be the official claim about how TM works.

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