Farallon EtherMac Adapter

[IlikeTech]

I recently bought on of these on evilBay for about 9 dollars! Yes! I can now connect my Mac SE to the internet with MacIPgw.  When it arrives I will record my setup of MacIP.

IlikeTech

 

[PotatoFi]

I know that this was ages ago... but any success? I just bought one of these and am waiting for it to arrive. I have a lot of questions:

• Does it need a 12v power supply, or will my Macintosh SE provide 12v over SCSI (I know nothing about SCSI)
  
• What kind of cable do I need to connect it?
  
• Can I bridge ethernet through to other Macs using AppleTalk?
  

So many questions.

Edit: The Farallon EtherMac SCSI that I bought bears a sticker that says "PN573-1". When I do ANY research on Farallon, I find a lot about the Farallon EtherMac MicroSCSI, part number PN574-C or PN575-C. Even Farallon's website on the wayback machine only shows the EtherMac MicroSCSI. If anyone has information about this adapter, it would be great to hear it.

 

[PotatoFi]

I did a bit more looking around, when saw this photo:



The case appears to be identical to the Farallon that I just bought:



Perhaps they're the exact same device with different branding? A quick Google of the DynaPORT SCSI/Link-T led me to this article, which gives us a look at what's inside the box (and gives me an idea of the device's size as well as power connector polarity).

 

[nglevin]

A thread on Apple's discussion forums claims that it was made for Farallon by Dayna so you could be on the right track there.

Seems in the not too distant past there was even some discussion here about finding the drivers. With (some) working links, too!

 

[IlikeTech]

The adapter I have had a serial connector, not scsi.  It plugged into the LocalTalk printer port, and bridged AppleTalk over Ethernet to AppleTalk over LocalTalk.  Now, if configured corrrctly, this adapter will do the same.  It does need drivers, but should be much faster than what I have.

Thanks

 

[just.in.time]

I saw that on eBay! Decided to wait for an Asante unit instead.

As for that 12v power supply, you will most likely need the external power adapter. More than likely a universal adapter will work just fine. That said, can’t hurt to try without the power supply.

 

[PotatoFi]

As for that 12v power supply, you will most likely need the external power adapter. More than likely a universal adapter will work just fine. That said, can’t hurt to try without the power supply.

I think you're right. The floppy drive provides 5v and 12v... but not the SCSI port if I remember correctly. I do not have a cable for this thing yet... so I still gotta figure out where to source that.

 

[PotatoFi]

Got it! No luck getting it working. SCSIProbe shows that something is connected on "3" (in addition to my hard drive on "1", and my Macintosh SE on "7"), but there's just a "dot" next to it and no further information. I'm not sure where to go from here but I'll keep trying to track down a user manual for this thing.

 

[nglevin]

You might just need a driver. This is assuming that the DaynaPORT drivers just work with it, from preterhuman.net . One of my favorite Hotline servers!

 

[Compgeke]

No need to wonder who actually made this box any longer, I got one of the $30 ebay ones and cracked it open. That's Dayna alright. I haven't tested software compatibility yet though, maybe if I ever get more than a day off work.

 

[PotatoFi]

Ok, I got everything working! A few notes:

Power

The "Farralon Ethermac SCSI" slash "DaynaPORT SCSI Link/T" takes 12v, center pin positive. I used a Linksys WRT54G power supply and it works perfectly, including having the exact needed barrel power connector.

SCSI

I checked my cable with a multimeter in continuity mode, ensuring that the pin mapping was 1-to-1, and that none of the pins were connected to other pins. Also note that SCSIProbe will show a "No data" indicator, but it doesn't seem to matter.

Drivers

The Farallon driver didn't work for me, but the DaynaPORT driver did. Installing it is a matter of unpacking the .sit file, and writing the image to a floppy disk using DD  in the terminal on modern macOS.

Installing on System 7 is very simple; run the installer. There's a note in the Readme on the disk that says to copy Ethermac to a specific folder... I ignored that.

That driver package seems to support a TON of Dayna products. It did automagically figure out that I needed the DaynaPORT SCSI Link/T driver but I did have the option to select other packages if I wanted to. Very cool!

MacTCP

Of course, you need MacTCP, but as a new user, I found the configuration to be cryptic. I used macTCP 2.0.6, which gets copied to the Control Panels folder. Here's how I configured it.

• Obtain Address: Manually
  
• Class: C
  
• Gateway Address: Whatever your router/gateway IP is
  
• Domain Name Server Information: The "Domain" column doesn't matter, "IP Address" does, and a default needs to be selected
  
• Ignore everything under "IP Address" except the class, select Class C if you're on a small home network like me
  

To specify the actual IP address of your machine, click Ok to back out to the the first macTCP window, where you can select Ethernet Built-in and specify your IP address. Click Close to save the settings.



After you reboot, you're done! I fired up a copy of Fetch and navigated to Max1zzz's FTP server to test functionality.

I don't think MacTCP supports DHCP but I have not tested this.

Switch Compatibility

I think I've heard some concerns about this adapter not talking to modern switches because it is 5 mbps half-duplex. I've connected it to both a Linksys Workgroup Hub and also directly to my Cisco SG-300-10P, and they both happily have talked to it. The old hub was useful for watching comms with Wireshark from my MacBook Pro.

 

[Paralel]

Any reason you are using MacTCP rather than Open Transport 1.3?

 

[PotatoFi]

I don't know the pros and cons of either one. I'm pretty new to this.

 

[Paralel]

Open Transport is what replaced MacTCP. It supports DHCP, etc...

 

[Retro Rider]

Oh, are you guys talking about farraon ethernet adapters? I need help with mine, the drivers or something doesn't work I got a dayna pocket scsi/link. Any help?

 

[PotatoFi]

Oh, are you guys talking about farraon ethernet adapters? I need help with mine, the drivers or something doesn't work I got a dayna pocket scsi/link. Any help?

Did you try the DaynaPORT driver that I linked to above? Here's the link again. I gotta admit that I'm a bit jealous of the pocket/compact versions... pulling 5v power from the Mac cleans things up a lot!

 

[Retro Rider]

Did you try the DaynaPORT driver that I linked to above? Here's the link again. I gotta admit that I'm a bit jealous of the pocket/compact versions... pulling 5v power from the Mac cleans things up a lot!

I got it in box, so it came with drivers

 

[PotatoFi]

Open Transport is what replaced MacTCP. It supports DHCP, etc...

Awesome! I need to try out Open Transport soon. I think all of this will culminate in a blog post or post in our Wiki.

Oh, are you guys talking about farraon ethernet adapters? I need help with mine, the drivers or something doesn't work I got a dayna pocket scsi/link. Any help?

Happy to help, but I would need to know exactly how it does not work. What happens when you try to use it? Is there a specific error message at a specific step in the installation process? What have you tried? Try to be as specific as possible, this is true when asking for help with *any* technical issue. I really want to see this card working for you!

I got it in box, so it came with drivers

Great, did the work? Did they not work? If they didn't, perhaps consider using the drivers that I linked above? Once again, I'm super jealous that you got a boxed one with drivers! That is way cool.

 

[Retro Rider]

Happy to help, but I would need to know exactly how it does not work. What happens when you try to use it? Is there a specific error message at a specific step in the installation process? What have you tried? Try to be as specific as possible, this is true when asking for help with *any* technical issue. I really want to see this card working for you!

Great, did the work? Did they not work? If they didn't, perhaps consider using the drivers that I linked above? Once again, I'm super jealous that you got a boxed one with drivers! That is way cool.

I've done the correct process to install it (I think) I've read the instruction manual, but it still hasn't worked. The part where I seem to be encountering an error is when the manual says to set the zone to Daynaport or whatever, but when I go to change it, there are no zones. I know the ethernet works. The installation seems to work. I have no clue what I'm doing wrong.