Snow Leopard and Classic Mac OS

[napabar]

Hey guys, I have some bad news. I just upgraded to Snow Leopard today, and the Classic Mac OS can no longer connect or share to it. I'm using a fully updated Mac OS 9 Mac, and I get an incompatible AFP error message. And yes, I'm using IP, not Appletalk.

Looks like the last vestige of AppleShare and Pre-OS X has been eliminated.

[Gil]

It was inevitable.

A sad day indeed.

[luddite]

I don't really get this (which is no big surprise)... aren't filesharing protocols essentially standards? Isn't this a bit like breaking ftp or http?
Someone please explain...

[MacJunky]

Pretty sure I recall reading that Apple ditched Appletalk in 10.6. I might be mistaken though.

[Flamingtoasters]

Darn, I was just getting ready to set up a network with my SE/30, Orange iMac, and Macbook...
Guess I'll have to stick to the old floppies and zip disks then.

[napabar]

Pretty sure I recall reading that Apple ditched Appletalk in 10.6. I might be mistaken though.

As I stated, I was connecting via AppleShare with IP, not AppleTalk.

AppleTalk was still around in 10.4 and 10.5, but just for printers. 10.5 worked just fine with Classic Macs and AppleShare over TCP/IP. 10.6 it's broken.

[porter]

aren't filesharing protocols essentially standards? Isn't this a bit like breaking ftp or http?

The difference is that ftp and http are international standards and not tied to any one vendor. The AppleTalk protocols are all, funnily enough, defined by Apple.

[JDW]

Yes but have you tried these steps to success?

And further reading on the TCPquantum hack as used in my steps.

[napabar]

Yes but have you tried these steps to success?

And further reading on the TCPquantum hack as used in my steps.

Tried it, but it doesn't work. I can add the line to the Pref file, and save it just fine with File Sharing off. After I try and fail to connect with the OS 9 Mac, the line is no longer in the pref file.

It looks like your hack was more of a 10.4 solution. 10.6 is very different.

It appears that the client will have to have AFP 3.0 or higher, which means Mac OS X. OS 9 introduced AFP 2.2, and it's not cutting it anymore.

[luddite]

The difference is that ftp and http are international standards and not tied to any one vendor. The AppleTalk protocols are all, funnily enough, defined by Apple.

Well, I get that part... just wondering if there's actually a pragmatic reason for breaking it (like they need the ports for something else) or if it's just a matter of forcing hardware upgrades.

[napabar]

The difference is that ftp and http are international standards and not tied to any one vendor. The AppleTalk protocols are all, funnily enough, defined by Apple.

Well, I get that part... just wondering if there's actually a pragmatic reason for breaking it (like they need the ports for something else) or if it's just a matter of forcing hardware upgrades.

AFP (AppleShare) has evolved many times over the years, where FTP has been a "Gold" standard for decades. AFP originally shared using AppleTalk, then a mixture of AppleTalk and IP, and finally just IP. Even there, when Mac OS X came out, they continued to evolve it to version 3.0. Apparently, that version (3.0) is required now to share files. Mac OS 9 only went up to AFP 2.2.

I think the main reason for this is less to test for Apple. In reality, most people who care about this stuff are Classic Apple nerds like us.

I don't think Apple's trying to force Mac OS 9 users to upgrade. If you're still using Mac OS 9, Apple has long since given up on trying to upgrade you.

[Mac128]

What about this method? It requires an intermediary, so I guess now, the intermediary has to be an 10.5.x or less?

[napabar]

What about this method? It requires an intermediary, so I guess now, the intermediary has to be an 10.5.x or less?

Hey, I wrote that article! LOL!

That was more related to getting really old Macs talking to Leopard, but now all Classic Macs are shut off!

Snow Leopard can share using FTP, which means you could share back to a Mac Plus easily with Fetch.

One cool thing about sharing with FTP is that it "Shares a Share" unlike AppleShare. In other words, all mounted drives, including network drives, are available to the FTP client. That is really cool. Imagine a Mac Plus pulling directly from an iDisk or other share it couldn't natively get to.

The downside of FTP is it's not disk/GUI based sharing. You can't mount and run apps off of it like AppleShare.

[JDW]

The downside of FTP...

Right now, I can use my G4 Cube running Tiger and my SE/30 running System 7.5.5 to talk to each other over Ethernet (via the TCPquantum hack), and I can simply drag one of my SE/30's hard disk partitions over to the Cube's hard drive to make a full backup of it. It's relative fast and easy, and all the System files copy over just fine. I never was able to accomplish that with FTP.

[4seasonphoto]

In a pinch, Snow Leopard still supports 1.44 megabyte USB floppy drives. Just thought I'd mention it.

[LCGuy]

No reason as to why it wouldn't - USB floppy drives use the standard USB Mass Storage drivers.

[Mac128]

In a pinch, Snow Leopard still supports 1.44 megabyte USB floppy drives. Just thought I'd mention it.

Is it that OS X .6 specifically supports 1.44MB floppy disk drives, or that it supports USB removable FAT volumes, of any size? I would think the USB drive itself would be responsible for the MFM encoding scheme, leaving it to send/receive the FAT file formatting via USB. As long as OS X understands FAT and allows 1.44MB volumes to be read and written, I can't imagine any Mac OS would ever omit the USB floppy disk – and I don't see FAT being eliminated anytime soon. This goes for any USB device. It's like asking how much longer will Apple support HFS, which can no longer be used as a startup disk?

Unfortunately, Apple dumped MFS with OS 8, and never fully revived it. Even MFSLives runs only on Tiger. I really wish someone would update MFSLives for Leopard as well as enabling read & write capabilities. Then if someone would only develop that USB GCR floppy drive!

[4seasonphoto]

Is it that OS X .6 specifically supports 1.44MB floppy disk drives

In the sense of appearing on the desktop with a floppy disk icon, yes.

[phreakout]

Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy, stated on this past weekend's episode that OSX code named "Snow Leopard" is the watershed for PowerPC-based Macs. It is the only version that you'll need an Intel Mac to run. This also includes dropping AppleTalk, as it is old and outdated.

73s de Phreakout.

[napabar]

Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy, stated on this past weekend's episode that OSX code named "Snow Leopard" is the watershed for PowerPC-based Macs. It is the only version that you'll need an Intel Mac to run. This also includes dropping AppleTalk, as it is old and outdated.

73s de Phreakout.

This isn't about file sharing with AppleTalk. It's about file sharing with AppleShare over IP. AppleTalk hasn't been used for file sharing since 10.3, and even then it was only for discovery purposes. The AppleTalk that was dropped from 10.6 was only used for printing to an AppleTalk printer.

[Anonymous Freak]

The downside of FTP is it's not disk/GUI based sharing. You can't mount and run apps off of it like AppleShare.

I'm presently connecting to a 10.5-running PPC server from my 10.6-running Intel laptop via FTP. (Go -> Connect to Server -> Typed in "ftp://MacServer.local") It mounted the root of the server as a new network share "/" on my desktop. I can browse it exactly the same as an AFP-connected share. (Although it is much slower.)

And I just launched AppleWorks 6 over the FTP connection. (Yup, AppleWorks 6, a PPC-only app.) When I double-clicked the icon, I got a warning "The application "AppleWorks 6" is on an FTP server. Are you sure you want to open "AppleWorks 6"? Applications may not run or may run very slowly when opened from an FTP server."

Update: AppleWorks refused to load. I did successfully load TextEdit, RealPlayer, and Sound Studio though. (TextEdit the 10.5-shipped Universal binary, RealPlayer 10, a Universal binary, and Sound Studio, a PPC-only app.)

[JDW]

If FTP was so great, we would have all ditched other connection methods for it long ago. But the fact is, FTP stinks. And like I said, it does not allow me to drag an entire disk partition from my SE/30 to my Intel Mac and make an easy backup like Appletalk over Ethernet allows.

[napabar]

The downside of FTP is it's not disk/GUI based sharing. You can't mount and run apps off of it like AppleShare.

I'm presently connecting to a 10.5-running PPC server from my 10.6-running Intel laptop via FTP. (Go -> Connect to Server -> Typed in "ftp://MacServer.local") It mounted the root of the server as a new network share "/" on my desktop. I can browse it exactly the same as an AFP-connected share. (Although it is much slower.)

And I just launched AppleWorks 6 over the FTP connection. (Yup, AppleWorks 6, a PPC-only app.) When I double-clicked the icon, I got a warning "The application "AppleWorks 6" is on an FTP server. Are you sure you want to open "AppleWorks 6"? Applications may not run or may run very slowly when opened from an FTP server."

Update: AppleWorks refused to load. I did successfully load TextEdit, RealPlayer, and Sound Studio though. (TextEdit the 10.5-shipped Universal binary, RealPlayer 10, a Universal binary, and Sound Studio, a PPC-only app.)

I was referring to Classic Macs not being able to run apps off an FTP share.

Mounting a FTP share as a disk is something that came along in 10.4 or 10.5 (can't remember). A Mac Plus can't do that! It has to use a client, and pull the files down to it's on drive first.

[Mac128]

I was referring to Classic Macs not being able to run apps off an FTP share.

Which reminds me. I need to check Sheepshaver's compatibility before I upgrade to Snow Leopard to ensure I can stilltransfer directly from OS X to my 128K.

Using MacTerminal, while slow is actually pretty easy. What surprises me is that Apple never updated MacTerminal to represent the files graphically. For all practical purposes it works like any terminal software, or FTP – files are represented by a directory list. Odd considering that Apple could have really set themselves apart from the crowd. Auto connection would have been helpful too, so one doesn't have to manually choose send and receive (though I understand why that was the case with a 400K disk-based system.

[napabar]

I was referring to Classic Macs not being able to run apps off an FTP share.

Which reminds me. I need to check Sheepshaver's compatibility before I upgrade to Snow Leopard to ensure I can stilltransfer directly from OS X to my 128K.

Using MacTerminal, while slow is actually pretty easy. What surprises me is that Apple never updated MacTerminal to represent the files graphically. For all practical purposes it works like any terminal software, or FTP – files are represented by a directory list. Odd considering that Apple could have really set themselves apart from the crowd. Auto connection would have been helpful too, so one doesn't have to manually choose send and receive (though I understand why that was the case with a 400K disk-based system.

That reminds me, Mac 128, why don't use just use Zterm on your modern Mac, and MacTerminal on the 128?