AppleShare via AirTalk between Mac Plus and MacBook Air

[twelvetone12]

Question still in topic for the ot: does netatalk do routing between Ethernet and localtalk?

 

[NJRoadfan]

Yes, atalkd in netatalk handles routing between interfaces, including LocalTalk. I have been testing modtashtalk exactly that way.

 

[twelvetone12]

How did you make it work? I wrestled with it for an afternoon, the localtalk side worked perfectly but ethernet kept dying and then I just gave up.

 

[NJRoadfan]

In atalkd.conf

eth0 -seed -phase 2 -net 2 -zone "EtherTalk"
lt0 -seed -phase 1 -net 1 -zone "LocalTalk"

Substitute your interface names as required. You may need to switch the order around too. Due to a possible bug, nbplkup will only see one network's nodes. Your LocalTalk clients should be able to see nodes on the Ethernet segment without a problem.

 

[Admiral Ackbar]

Yes, I got it to work. It was just a brain failure on my part. I barely squeezed AppleTalk onto an 800K System 6.0.8 startup disk, so I can be an AppleTalk client running from a floppy disk on a Mac Plus. Good times.

I have 212k free in an 800k floppy on 4mb Mac Plus, would like to use AirTalk with it also. Can you share what is on your disk to get it to connect with AppleShare? I first tried to make a network ready System 608 floppy but it failed.

 

[mousehouse]

An Asante LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge is $200 on EBay nowadays. The good thing about them is they actually do IP in DDP packets, which I believe the Airtalk does not. You could use MacIP to get internet access on the old Mac or use the built in AppleShare functionality.

A merged Airtalk with MacIP would be a dream device

 

[cheesestraws]

I have 212k free in an 800k floppy on 4mb Mac Plus, would like to use AirTalk with it also. Can you share what is on your disk to get it to connect with AppleShare? I first tried to make a network ready System 608 floppy but it failed.

I don't know what BMOW did, but this is mine: it has 6.0.7, AppleShare and DiskImageMounter on it: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/system-6-0-7-localtalk-network-access-disk.41238/

 

[LaPorta]

An Asante LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge is $200 on EBay nowadays. The good thing about them is they actually do IP in DDP packets, which I believe the Airtalk does not. You could use MacIP to get internet access on the old Mac or use the built in AppleShare functionality.

A merged Airtalk with MacIP would be a dream device

How does one use MacIP, anyhow?

 

[twelvetone12]

I've been toying with the idea for a bit, you basically implement a MacIP gateway on the esp, since it already implements a basic appletalk stack.

 

[cheesestraws]

It should be absolutely possible - the way to do this would probably be for the AirTalk to get a second IP address via DHCP and just pass that through via MacIP pretending to be a MacIP gateway to the LocalTalk side only.

Realistically, this isn't something I'm going to have time/energy to do myself, but if anyone else feels like building it, I'd be happy to merge that upstream for "AirTalk 2.0" so long as it didn't require much in the way of extra configuration by the user...

 

[mousehouse]

How does one use MacIP, anyhow?

You would need some sort of device to bridge LocalTalk (serial links) to Ethernet. The MacIP device (can be the MacIP software on a PI or VM) or a Cisco router, etc. will share that it is a router on the LocalTalk segment.

Your Mac will encapsulate its IP packets into DDP packets which will be decapsulated on the MacIP device and forwarded on.

As the Airtalk already has the Ethernet side (wireless) and LocalTalk and right now encapsulates into multicast (if memory servers me right), if it can run the MacIP code (and play AppleTalk router) it would make a nifty Asante replacement (given their cost) with WiFi, and all classic Macs can remain on LocalTalk.

 

[LaPorta]

I’ve already got a bridge and can run regular AppleTalk via PhoneNet and across Ethernet. The issue I’m having is that I’m attempting to use the “updated” AppleShare on System 7.1, which works great when the servers are reachable via IP…but that isn’t the case with the LocalTalk connectors. So I need a way to Berish’s the gap.

 

[Andy]

An Asante LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge is $200 on EBay nowadays. The good thing about them is they actually do IP in DDP packets, which I believe the Airtalk does not. You could use MacIP to get internet access on the old Mac or use the built in AppleShare functionality.

The AsanteTalk?


I have one and unless there's some configuration i don't know about it doesn't do any IP over DDP translation. Actually I kinda hate them as they do a very poor job of updating their routing tables when new devices come online and generally are very flaky. I have to reboot mine a bunch inorder to get it to work. Recently bought a used Farallon EtherMac MultiPrinter Adapter and that has worked was more reliably. Still no IP over DDP though.

I agree that I'd love to see a new little device that does both EtherTalk / LocalTalk routing and MacIP. That would be so nice.

 

[beachycove]

I think what you are talking about here can partly be done by running a machine with Apple Internet Router + Apple IP Gateway. These networking products from the late 68k era worked together very nicely. Other options from years back were the proper, full version of ShareWay IP, or to some extent, Appleshare IP Server. Version 6 of the latter, and I presume v.5 as well, had a feature called multihoming which allowed the server to accept LocalTalk, EtherTalk, or IP clients, meaning basically that it allowed for shares on multiple ports using multiple protocols simultaneously. I ran all of them at one time or another, which I found very handy for quite a few years before OSX moved on and became too snooty to communicate with my old gear.

 

[Mk.558]

You can use IPNetRouter, although I'd probably recommend a newer solution like macipgw.

AppleTalk bridges like the AsanteTalk bridge cannot forward IP packets. They only do DDP AppleTalk and nothing else, but they should still work just fine with MacIP. MacIP is just encapsulation of IP packets inside DDP packets. Client-side it's actually super easy to set up. The only device I know of besides MacIP compatible bridges like the FastPath 5, Cayman Systems Gatorbox and possibly 1 or 2 others is the flaky but fascinating Farallon Etherwave Mac/PB adapter aka Farallon Etherwave Printer Adapter.

As for AppleTalk bridges, I am a big fan of the Farallon iPrint LT. Never had a single problem with it.

I’ve already got a bridge and can run regular AppleTalk via PhoneNet and across Ethernet. The issue I’m having is that I’m attempting to use the “updated” AppleShare on System 7.1, which works great when the servers are reachable via IP…but that isn’t the case with the LocalTalk connectors. So I need a way to Berish’s the gap.

AppleShare WS 3.5 or AppleShare Client 3.7.4?

I have 212k free in an 800k floppy on 4mb Mac Plus, would like to use AirTalk with it also. Can you share what is on your disk to get it to connect with AppleShare? I first tried to make a network ready System 608 floppy but it failed.

If you look in the Download Town below you'll find a System 2.01 NAD which is designed specifically for your Plus and the II/SE without the FDHD upgrade. It'll be updated slightly in the next version of the Guide. You can absolutely make a System 6.0.8 NAD but with only 800KiB to work with you'll be forced to make use of a RAM disk or something if you want to run Fetch or something that uses TCP/IP.

 

[mousehouse]

The AsanteTalk?


I have one and unless there's some configuration i don't know about it doesn't do any IP over DDP translation. Actually I kinda hate them as they do a very poor job of updating their routing tables when new devices come online and generally are very flaky. I have to reboot mine a bunch inorder to get it to work. Recently bought a used Farallon EtherMac MultiPrinter Adapter and that has worked was more reliably. Still no IP over DDP though.

I agree that I'd love to see a new little device that does both EtherTalk / LocalTalk routing and MacIP. That would be so nice.

You’re fully correct of course. It will be the Mac that creates the DDP packets, the Asante Talk will just bridge them over from serial AppleTalk to Ethernet AppleTalk.

It’s quite nice to have, it beats adding Ethernet cards to everything. Although, there’s some alternatives with BlueSCSI now as well.

When I have my SE/30 working again (being recapped) I’ll have a look at the AirTalk software to see if that would be an easy thing to do!