Announcing and interest check: Integrated AirTalk for PowerBook 100 series

[micheledipaola]

This is great but when the hardware will be ready (and I would gladly buy a PowerBook unit, plus the possible Portable version!) I will need some clear instruction because I am a bit lost now - why the Linux PC now?

 

[twelvetone12]

Nono the PC is not required! I just run an AFP server on my PC!

 

[LaPorta]

How is this coming along? Excited to see progress.

 

[twelvetone12]

Just got the new PCBs today! Will post a photo when I get home

 

[twelvetone12]

Finally the new PCBs are here! I hope to have a moment this week to mount them.

 

[cheesestraws]

Finally the new PCBs are here! I hope to have a moment this week to mount them.

I'm really looking forward to see how these work!

 

[twelvetone12]

When I tested the first version, it worked quite well, but it was external to the machine. I'm very curious to see how it works when it is inside and the case closed.

 

[LaPorta]

Those look really nice, I can't wait to see how it pans out!

Quick, unrelated question: everyone seems to be making these fire engine red PCBs these days....are they just the cheapest option, or green has gone out of style?

 

[twelvetone12]

Haha I like red! In reality in my company we make all products on red pcbs (it is like our "color scheme"), so I just did them that way out of habit

 

[twelvetone12]

Good news! No inverted sockets this time, no fuming regulators... it works!

Here it is neatly installed in my powerbook 100:


And here it is transferring some stuff to Mini vMac:


I tried it with the case closed, and works too. One thing I did not think about is isolation since there are metal parts on top, for the moment I just went with some tape. Also some labels are reversed! oops!
I want to do some more tests later to see how performance it, it seems "normal" but I would like to test it more.
I also made a CDEV that reads the WIFI and STATUS lines (the yellow leds) but I'm not sure if it is really useful, as updating the CDEV is sloooow. There is also a button there connected to esp RESET which I need to fix (the pin is low and rst is acrive low, ooops2), and again I'm wondering if it is useful (it does have a reset button).

If anybody is interested in playing with this, I have parts to make four more. Then we can see if this is interest to make even more of these.
I was looking at the documentation for the Portable and the modem port is basically the same, so I think fitting it there would be matter of redoing the layout and using the 18 pin (iirc?) connector it uses.
But for now, I'm happy!

 

[cheesestraws]

Quick, unrelated question: everyone seems to be making these fire engine red PCBs these days....are they just the cheapest option, or green has gone out of style?

It's really that for hobbyists, green is no longer uniquely cheap: you can get a number of colours (including green) for basically the same price. So people choose colours they like . This is how I made the coloured original AirTalk sets, too.

 

[twelvetone12]

@cheesestraws How difficult do you think it would be to implement MacIP on the ESP and make it an IP gateway?

 

[cheesestraws]

@cheesestraws How difficult do you think it would be to implement MacIP on the ESP and make it an IP gateway?

Probably not that difficult! MacIP is built on top of pretty standard AppleTalk protocols, and the ESP easily has the CPU time to deal with it.

 

[twelvetone12]

I know there are other solutions which use SCSI which will be faster, but it seems a fun thing to implement and it could be handy for slow laptops like the 100.
I did more tests, and it seems to work pretty well and seems quite stable. Do you know if there are tools I can use to measure network performance?

 

[LaPorta]

Just keeping my fingers crossed for a Portable version!

 

[reukiodo]

This is pretty exciting! Especially if it can replace the modem in a lot more Macs!

 

[bigmessowires]

Good news! No inverted sockets this time, no fuming regulators... it works!

Great work, congratulations!

 

[twelvetone12]

Just keeping my fingers crossed for a Portable version!

Well I can look into that, but I don't have a portable to try it on!

This is pretty exciting! Especially if it can replace the modem in a lot more Macs!

It should work on all the 1xx family except the 190. I will build a second one to test on my 150 and see what happens.

 

[twelvetone12]

I mounted and tested a second one, and put it in my PowerBook 150, but it does not works Well, the module itself does seem to work, but LocalTalk refuses to switch to the modem port, so I cannot do anything. I will dig more into it, the 150 is quite different from the other 1xx and maybe it works on other models.

 

[halkyardo]

This is brilliant! I was playing with modems a while ago and noticed that the one in my 180c seems to be dead (responds to commands but the line interface is kaput), and something like this would be a perfect replacement... and a good excuse to finally rebuild the battery like I've been thinking about for years.