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Introducing (and interest check) AirTalk: Wireless plug-and-play LocalTalk dongles
- Thread starter cheesestraws
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cheesestraws
Well-known member
Thanks all for your comments and interest! Sounds like it's definitely going to be worth trying to work out how to "mass" produce these (for fairly small values of "mass"). If I miss anyone's questions, please poke me—not ignoring you, just poor short-term memory. 
Bear in mind that, as I said, this isn't a LocalTalk bridge to EtherTalk, so you'll need an extra bit of software to do any bridging you need between EtherTalk and LToUDP. Personally I'd probably try @sfiera's "multitalk" (though I haven't tried that with these myself yet) which speaks the same protocol over the air, and will turn it into EtherTalk. If you don't mind having that extra bit of software, this will do that for you.
I'd really like that, thankyou! As you can see, as a placeholder I somewhat fell back on a rather naff visual pun which doesn't communicate much and which didn't require any artistic skill. A proper icon would be lovely.
Great! Good luck with the house move!
With the caveat that only half of this currently works: you go to the Chooser, click the AirTalk icon and choose a network. Then click "connect" and it brings up a password dialog box a bit like AppleShare, where you enter a password if necessary. Then click OK, and the airtalk restarts and (hopefully) connects to the new network. How error handling is going to work for this is a bit unknown yet: I'm slightly bending the rules for AppleTalk to make this work, and I'm not yet totally sure if this will have any odd effects.
The way I'd probably go about this is to take one of the existing AppleTalk server appliances (like A2SERVER or @mactjaap's MacIP distribution) and add @sfiera's multitalk to it, as per my answer to @CC_333 above. I haven't tried this yet, but on the face of it it looks shouldn't be too difficult: perhaps if @mactjaap is around and has time, they could check whether I'm being an idiot in this suggestion. It's a Go app and will mostly be statically linked therefore, so it should (should?) just be a matter of dropping the binary onto the installation, starting it up and away you go.
Bear in mind that, as I said, this isn't a LocalTalk bridge to EtherTalk, so you'll need an extra bit of software to do any bridging you need between EtherTalk and LToUDP. Personally I'd probably try @sfiera's "multitalk" (though I haven't tried that with these myself yet) which speaks the same protocol over the air, and will turn it into EtherTalk. If you don't mind having that extra bit of software, this will do that for you
.I'd really like that, thankyou! As you can see, as a placeholder I somewhat fell back on a rather naff visual pun which doesn't communicate much and which didn't require any artistic skill. A proper icon would be lovely.
Great! Good luck with the house move!
With the caveat that only half of this currently works: you go to the Chooser, click the AirTalk icon and choose a network. Then click "connect" and it brings up a password dialog box a bit like AppleShare, where you enter a password if necessary. Then click OK, and the airtalk restarts and (hopefully) connects to the new network. How error handling is going to work for this is a bit unknown yet: I'm slightly bending the rules for AppleTalk to make this work, and I'm not yet totally sure if this will have any odd effects.
Do you have any idea of an AppleTalk file server software that would run on a modern computer and be able to share files around your network using AirTalk ?
The way I'd probably go about this is to take one of the existing AppleTalk server appliances (like A2SERVER or @mactjaap's MacIP distribution) and add @sfiera's multitalk to it, as per my answer to @CC_333 above. I haven't tried this yet, but on the face of it it looks shouldn't be too difficult: perhaps if @mactjaap is around and has time, they could check whether I'm being an idiot in this suggestion
. It's a Go app and will mostly be statically linked therefore, so it should (should?) just be a matter of dropping the binary onto the installation, starting it up and away you go.
mg.man
Well-known member
Just to be completely clear...
I'd totally be up for doing some alpha-testing for you... even in *our* time-zone! 
KeithTilton
Active member
This is *exactly what I have been looking for. I cannot wait for this product to be done.
micheledipaola
Well-known member
Super interesting, I would love to be in your waiting list
cheesestraws
Well-known member
If what you want is Ethernet, a SCSI-to-Ethernet board is probably the better option. Disadvantages of mine over one of those are:
- Speed (just, though SCSI ethernet isn't that fast either, and if you want a fast network connection on a slotless Mac you might be expecting too much).
- Encapsulation: a SCSI-to-Ethernet adapter will speak "native" EtherTalk. Mine doesn't and you'd require an extra step to bridge it.
The main advantages of my approach over SCSI-to-Ethernet are:
- Wireless! There aren't currently any SCSI to WiFi adapters out there. I'd imagine there could be—a wireless version of something like the Scuznet feels like it ought to be possible, but it doesn't currently exist.
- This doesn't require any non-stock or third-party drivers, so it gets around the problem of "how do I get the driver onto this totally pristine mac so I can get new software onto it".
- Will network with mini vMac and the other thousands (<-- wishful thinking: actually, I think, 2) of exciting software products that speak LToUDP!
The way to think about this is "wireless localtalk" rather than "ethernet"; if what you want is Ethernet there are probably easier ways to obtain it, especially since the scuznet is now reasonably available for slotless machines, and other machines tend to have reasonably accessible options for ethernet cards. If what you want is localtalk just without all those tiresome long bus cables, that is what this is trying to achieve. You can also bridge that wireless localtalk to ethernet much more easily than you would bridge physical localtalk, but if you're doing it just to bridge it straight to Ethernet and you have the wiring available to do so, you might as well go straight to Ethernet.
ronan
Well-known member
Thanks again for you super detailed and clear answer @cheesestraws
I'm willing to help for the development or electronic design if you need
I'm willing to help for the development or electronic design if you need
cheesestraws
Well-known member
I'm willing to help for the development or electronic design if you need
Thanks! This is really a learning exercise for me, so feedback will be extremely appreciated when I get slightly closer to finished. I'm going to upload the firmware to github as soon as I've got to a point where it doesn't have my wireless network details hardcoded in it (ahem) and anyone who wants to help out with a bit of code review of that, that would also be extremely useful.
superjer2000
Well-known member
Super cool! Just to confirm my understanding, if you’re using real hardware and not minivmac, you would need two of these, right? Ie if I have a netatalk server on Ethernet, I wouldn’t be able to connect to it with this device, but if I had two macs and two of these I could link them together via LocalTalk?
Give that, it doesn’t seem like you could bridge to a larger wires LocalTalk network, is that right?
Give that, it doesn’t seem like you could bridge to a larger wires LocalTalk network, is that right?
I will point out that RaSCSI devices can act as a SCSI to wifi adapter, among their many other nifty tricks, but they do require a third party driver installation which can be done with the RaSCSI itself.
That being said, these are /extremely/ nifty and I'm very excited by them. Fine work!
cheesestraws
Well-known member
Oh, I didn't realise that code was finished, last time I looked it was still very much in progress. Isn't that stuck using NAT though? So no listening sockets in IP land and no AppleTalk at all? (or am I missing something?)
cheesestraws
Well-known member
(sorry for the double post, hit 'reply' too early)
That's mostly correct, except...
You ought to be able to plug one of these into a localtalk network with multiple machines on (though as I said above, I haven't stress tested this properly yet), so you can use two of them to bridge two LocalTalk segments together, each with multiple machines on. So if, for example, you had a LocalTalk network with three macs on downstairs and a LocalTalk network with three macs on upstairs, you could plug one of these into the end of your network downstairs, and one into the end of your network upstairs, and it'd bridge the two together (though with more latency than a wire would). In fact my testing setup is a PowerBook 3400 and an SE on a localtalk bus with this on the end, because the localtalk packet sniffer software I use needs an old OS...
That's mostly correct, except...
You ought to be able to plug one of these into a localtalk network with multiple machines on (though as I said above, I haven't stress tested this properly yet), so you can use two of them to bridge two LocalTalk segments together, each with multiple machines on. So if, for example, you had a LocalTalk network with three macs on downstairs and a LocalTalk network with three macs on upstairs, you could plug one of these into the end of your network downstairs, and one into the end of your network upstairs, and it'd bridge the two together (though with more latency than a wire would). In fact my testing setup is a PowerBook 3400 and an SE on a localtalk bus with this on the end, because the localtalk packet sniffer software I use needs an old OS...
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cheesestraws
Well-known member
may as well make it a triple post now tbh
Another note: one can also bridge the protocol these use to EtherTalk in software. I've been talking about @sfiera's multitalk software above, I don't know if anyone else has written one, but if you ran that as a companion to your netatalk server on Ethernet, your Macs with these dongles would be able to access it.
Another note: one can also bridge the protocol these use to EtherTalk in software. I've been talking about @sfiera's multitalk software above, I don't know if anyone else has written one, but if you ran that as a companion to your netatalk server on Ethernet, your Macs with these dongles would be able to access it.
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