I'm looking for options that are Free, Realistic, and Practical.

Transferring via IM is most likely out of the question. I'm willing to bet that NetOps on both networks would shut down both of our ports.

Obviously, CDR is out of the question.

I have a spare 20GB HD that I could format for use in his machine, and I bet we could cut the file into two pieces. Would I be able to mount that HD in my G3?

Any ideas?

Here is what i did to transfer large amounts of data from my pc to my mac :
-Install Timbuktu Pro on both machines (you can d/l a tiral version I think).
-Connect the 2 machines via the ethernet ports. (note that you have to use a special kind of ethernet cable for this to work)
-One computer gets this ip adress: 192.168.0.1 , and the other 192.168.0.2 .

Basically that's what i did. But I only transfered around 4.5 gigs, so I guess it'll take you quite a while to transfer that much data.
The cable should be pretty cheap or if you have the proper tools/materials/knowledge you can make it yourself

It's doable, but I was looking for an easier option. I do have a cross-over cable already, so that's not a problem. I'd also use FTP instead of Timbuktu so there is less CPU overhead, and I'd hook both machines into my switch so we could duplex (transfer @ 200Mbps). It'd still take forever.

...still looking for an easier option...

uhh - right now i'm thinking break it up into smaller files and take a small part home each day via cdrw

Or is there a loss-less video codec I could compress it with?

Even at 12x (he only has a 6x) that'd take 5.6hrs, not counting the fact that a 12x burner takes a lot longer than 6.66 minutes to burn a CD.

might work if the pc has firewire and the apropiate software

Two different cameras both cause my machine to hang as soon as I plug them in. I've gone over the drivers a billion times and everything is correct. Final Cut Pro tells me I'm missing my DV hardware every time I launch it, too.

I had to use my friend's FireWire equipped PC to capture the footage, and had a brain fart when I thought getting the file from his box to mine would be a trivial task.

...ethernet shouldn't realisticly be expected to perform much faster than 50% of its rated speed. Is this assumption out dated?

What Mac do you have? When I needed to move 15gb (let me guess, mp3s) I used a PC laptop then transfered over ethernet. Another idea would be to take a HD, put it in the PC and copy everything, then remove it and put it in the Mac. The Mac should recogize it as a PC volume and mount it as long as you hook it up as a slave. Then simply move things between the newly mounted PC drive and the original Mac volume and your done...

I do have a spare HD, but it's only 20GB. I guess I'll just use WinZip to cut the file in half and then copy each half to my main drives.

So my machine should be able to mount a PC HD with no problems? I'm on a B&W G3 w/non-functional FireWire ports.

I have a B&W G3/400 running OSX (in addition to my TiPB G4/550) so we have almost the same machines. If you hook up a standard IDE cable with a slave and a master drive, put the original drive on the master setting and on the middle connector on the cable, hook up the PC drive as cable select (CS) and on the end of the ribbon it should mount. Be careful about initializing it, you don't want to erase it... make sure you have a backup! As long as its not the primary drive with the OS it shouldn't require it to be Mac UFS.

I've actually got an ATA card in my machine, so I could put the drive on its own channel. It's a 20GB drive that just sits there spnning. I haven't used it in a few months.

Which version G3/400 do you have? I have the original (with the slow vid card & small heat sink) and couldn't get OSX to work on it at all. It kept locking up every 5min or so. I got rid of it because it was unusable.

yeah, the good one... Ordered it the same day Jobs introduced in in January of 1999. I put more ram into it (784mb) and a 45gb drive and it runs X - OK. Once in a while I get one of those fun Unix memory dumps but its stable most of the time. Same thing happened with almsot the exact same machine at work, I think the Yosemite is just one the edge of being compatiable. I just got a new Ti Powerbook G4/550 with 512mb ram and we just replaced the Yosemite at work with a Dual 1ghz PowerMac with 1.5gb ram... fun stuff...