Farallon PhoneNet AppleTalk adapters

[djhaloeight]

Just picked up 3 new in box PhonetNet units with terminators on eBay for $6. Also grabbed another 6 used units for $8, also on eBay. Will come in handy when I get around to picking up a few more vintage Macs and want to network them together. I remember running PhoneNet networks back in 7th grade in the computer lab Super easy.

 

[Elfen]

Congrats on the purchase. How many Macs you going to connect?

 

[trag]

Congrats on the purchase. How many Macs you going to connect?

Just a note -- built-in file sharing in System 7 has a limit of eight connected clients (or maybe 7).  We tried to play network Spaceward Ho one time, which relies on file sharing the game file and folks kept getting kicked off the game.  Spent hours trouble-shooting  the hardware adn didn't realize it was a software limitation until days later.  This is unlikely to matter, as one rarely has several machines accessing the same server simultaneously, but I like to mention it to possibly save someone else the headache down the line.

Of course, you should be able to physically network as many localtalk machines as you like.  They just can't all connect to one server at a time if there's more than seven or eight of them.

 

[djhaloeight]

I don't plan on linking more than 5 or 6 Macs. My LCIIi+, and the LCII for sure. I'm looking into picking up a 7xxx series Power Mac, and maybe a 64/6500 tower. I'd also like to resurrect my B&W G3.

 

[Elfen]

Just a note -- built-in file sharing in System 7 has a limit of eight connected clients (or maybe 7).

I do not know about File sharing, but in the community I ran in the 1990s, I had 32 Macs of various configurations, a mix of System 6 & 7. In the schools I worked at also had Mac Labs on PhoneNet (before they upgraded to EtherNet) had about 35 networked Macs of Mixed Systems. In these set ups, there was an AppleShare Server on the network with a few Laser Printers and all the machines could see them and from what I can tell, each other.

Perhaps it was one machine with AppleShare Server vs. all the machines having File Sharing on that made the difference, I do not know, but all they were able to connect to the Apple Share Server without problems... well, other than the network being extremely slow when everyone tried to access the network at once.

In these set ups, I used 4 wire twisted pair shielded Phone Cable (a version of 4 wire cat5 cable). It's hard to find and get but it was great for running lengths across the building. It held up the network nicely without dropping the signal.

 

[djhaloeight]

Yeah.  In our labs we also had over 25+ Macs linked on PhoneNet, with a central file server and shared laser printer.  No problems there.  The limit is probably when just sharing each hard drive individually.

 

[trag]

Appleshare gives the machine more capability than simple built-in file sharing.