Category: Macintosh Plus

One of the really impressive features of the Macintosh computer was the networking. With the addition of a transceiver for each machine and some cabling, Macs could be networked together to share a printer and files.

They did this by running the AppleTalk protocol over LocalTalk or similar eg the Farallon Phonenet.

I have some LocalTalk transceivers, but many more Phonenet transceivers. The latter was popular because they could use low cost telephone cables and in some cases existing cabling infrastructure.

It takes close to zero effort to connect up a network of Macs.

I wanted to go a little further than that, though, by trying to bridge to a more modern file server. The first part of my plan was to serve out files, preferably in an extracted form, from a machine that could efficiently access sites like Macintosh Garden.

I also wanted to get TCP/IP networking going so that all the Macs could, ideally, browse the web (eg Protoweb), but failing that, access an FTP server or a bulletin board using telnet.

When i first set up the modernish server the only machine i could use as a Localtalk/Ethernet bridge was my original SE/30. It has a Localtalk port and an Ethernet port.

I used this brilliant resource to guide me:

http://www.applefool.com/se30/

My understanding was that System 7.5.5 with Appleshare 3.7.4 and Open Transport 1.3 would talk an Apple system as late as OSX 10.3. I happened to have OSX 10.3 on a PowerMac G5. The G5 also had OSX 10.5 on which i could run the TenFourFox browser (which was live at that time).

This setup worked, albeit through a somewhat “pass the parcel” technique:

• Download on G5 OSX 10.5
• Share from G5 OSX 10.3 using AppleShare on Ethernet
• Grab from G5 with SE/30 using AppleTalk on Ethernet
• Share from SE/30 with 7.5.5 to other old Mac using AppleShare on Localtalk/Phonenet
• Grab on old Mac with 6.0.8 using AppleTalk

Obviously, i wasn’t going to do this one file at a time!

I added the unsupported LocalTalk host software which allowed other machines running at least System 7 to also access the G5 OSX 10.3 shares. I could not get this to work with the SEs on 6.0.8, although others may have more success.

I later changed my modernish mac to a PowerMac G4 which ran MacOS 9.1 and OSX 10.4. I found that even the SEs running 6.0.8 were able to access the System 9 shares via the Localtalk Bridge.

A laserwriter was beyond me, but i was able to add an HP LaserJet 6MP and an ImageWriter II both by with LocalTalk interface. The LocalTalk interface card for the imagewriter was given to me by an Australian Vintage Computer Collectors member Scott H.

TCP/IP is required for applications such as FTP, Telnet, and browsers.

It was first implemented on Macs by MacTCP which was available for System 6 and was included as a part of System 7. In the absence of Ethernet, MacTCP uses AppleTalk as the “bearer”. TCP/IP packets are embedded in AppleTalk packets.

My Ethernet carrying SE/30 and a few other machines with Ethernet that i had at one time eg LC III and 660AV simply connect to TCP/IP services via Ethernet. I set up all of these machines to use the Open Transport TCP/IP implementation under System 7.5.5 or later.

My main interest is in the older machines, including the Mac Plus, SE, and SE/30. These machines (except for the one SE/30) only have LocalTalk connections.

The LocalTalk Bridge on the SE/30 (or various other machines with Ethernet) will happily move the AppleTalk packets to the Ethernet, where they are embedded in TCP/IP packets. This means that the original MacTCP packets are embedded in an AppleTalk packet, which is then encapsulated in a TCP/IP packet. They are effectively on a separate virtual TCP/IP network.

To overcome this, a router is required. After a little searching, I found that IPNetRouter is a viable solution.  I also found that although it still requires registration, there is a free registration for non-commercial use.  You have to go back in time to pick up a promo version:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080328045722/http://www.sustworks.com/site/news_promo.html

The versions cited in the article are for PPC.  For 68000 use 1.54 with the same codes.

The router can run on any machine on the Ethernet network. The LocalTalk machines still need to be bridged to Ethernet, but not necessarily on the same machine as the router.

As per the instruction, i have set up a private network, 192.168.0.x behind the router.  The MacTCP clients don’t seem to support DHCP, so the IP addresses have been allocated manually, with the router address being 192.168.0.1. The IP address on the Ethernet side is allocated by the network DHCP server.

This is a screenshot from an LC III that was running IPNetRouter but i’ve also run it on the SE/30 and a 660AV.

Example of a localtalk client:

This allows all System 7.5.5 machines to browse the internet using Netscape.  The colour classic, running System 7.1 only has 6MB of memory, which is insufficient to support Netscape. It does work if swapping is turned on.  I have not succeeded in getting the 6.0.8 machines to run a browser.

All machines support telnet and FTP clients. 

I was able to log into an internet BBS and also into my SGI workstation.

I came back to this a year later and had a bit of trouble getting it going again.  Fortunately, I had the images above.  It seems that the configuration needs to be saved and then reloaded.  Perhaps a default file is loaded on startup.