QuicksilverMac2001
Well-known member
OK, so I'm stumped on this one. I've tried to look all over here as well as everywhere Bing and Google would show me and they were not taking me to where I needed to go.
I have an Apple EtherTalk NB Card running in my 8MB RAM, 80MB HD, 32KB cache card Macintosh IIci and it wants to connect to the network. It can't get a link. It's running System 6.0.8 with Network Software Installer 1.4.5 installed, and MacTCP 2.0.6.
I have to give the Comcast DNS servers rather than making the wireless router the DNS server like Open Transport on Mac OS 8.6 and later. I read that sometimes MacTCP needs different defaults than Open Transport, and so I put the Comcast DNS servers in rather than letting it use my AirPort Base Station as a DNS server the way you can with Open Transport.
The current networking hardware setup is a 802.11b AirPort Snow/Dual Ethernet UFO base station along with a 10/100Base-TX Ethernet switch I occasionally use that both of them features System 6 obfuscating features such as auto-negotiation as regards duplex, auto-sensing as regards whether it's 10baseT or 100Base-TX, full duplex (because all other Macs on my network support operation that is supposedly a toxic trio for a System 6 Mac with a 1989 vintage Ethernet card that just barely supports AppleTalk Phase 2.)
What happens when I have it hooked up using the best available connection system is that the IIci properly initializes the card and goes ahead and sets MacTCP to connect via Ethernet, and AppleTalk to connect via EtherTalk the way it says you should do under the article about Classic Mac Networking.
If I change the settings software or hardware-wise from what I read should work (and does work as much as possible) for my situation, I get the famous error that "There was an error starting your AppleTalk connection. The built-in LocalTalk port will be used instead."
According to years of research, if it doesn't say that message, that means your settings are correct for the network you want to use. But since the network is auto-negotiating, auto-sensing, and full duplex (because all my other devices support those three items), the IIci can't light up the link signal on the transceiver. At least that's what I am theorizing.
If the transceiver wasn't compatible with the card, then it would fail to get EtherTalk going according to everything I've read. But yet with those three advanced features on the router end, that combination is what to me seemingly not allowing it to establish a connection. It even works well enough that if you disconnect the Ethernet cord, it knows it's been disconnected and you have to zap the PRAM in order to get the IIci to not display the expected error message until you fiddle with it again (i.e by moving it to a different port, such as a port on the external 4-port 10/100Base-TX switch or on a different router.)
If I'm barking up the wrong tree here, then I want to know why it seems to work in all areas except getting a link (and of course, through the link that it wants to have but does not, being able to work with my other computers and the Internet.)
I have an Apple EtherTalk NB Card running in my 8MB RAM, 80MB HD, 32KB cache card Macintosh IIci and it wants to connect to the network. It can't get a link. It's running System 6.0.8 with Network Software Installer 1.4.5 installed, and MacTCP 2.0.6.
I have to give the Comcast DNS servers rather than making the wireless router the DNS server like Open Transport on Mac OS 8.6 and later. I read that sometimes MacTCP needs different defaults than Open Transport, and so I put the Comcast DNS servers in rather than letting it use my AirPort Base Station as a DNS server the way you can with Open Transport.
The current networking hardware setup is a 802.11b AirPort Snow/Dual Ethernet UFO base station along with a 10/100Base-TX Ethernet switch I occasionally use that both of them features System 6 obfuscating features such as auto-negotiation as regards duplex, auto-sensing as regards whether it's 10baseT or 100Base-TX, full duplex (because all other Macs on my network support operation that is supposedly a toxic trio for a System 6 Mac with a 1989 vintage Ethernet card that just barely supports AppleTalk Phase 2.)
What happens when I have it hooked up using the best available connection system is that the IIci properly initializes the card and goes ahead and sets MacTCP to connect via Ethernet, and AppleTalk to connect via EtherTalk the way it says you should do under the article about Classic Mac Networking.
If I change the settings software or hardware-wise from what I read should work (and does work as much as possible) for my situation, I get the famous error that "There was an error starting your AppleTalk connection. The built-in LocalTalk port will be used instead."
According to years of research, if it doesn't say that message, that means your settings are correct for the network you want to use. But since the network is auto-negotiating, auto-sensing, and full duplex (because all my other devices support those three items), the IIci can't light up the link signal on the transceiver. At least that's what I am theorizing.
If the transceiver wasn't compatible with the card, then it would fail to get EtherTalk going according to everything I've read. But yet with those three advanced features on the router end, that combination is what to me seemingly not allowing it to establish a connection. It even works well enough that if you disconnect the Ethernet cord, it knows it's been disconnected and you have to zap the PRAM in order to get the IIci to not display the expected error message until you fiddle with it again (i.e by moving it to a different port, such as a port on the external 4-port 10/100Base-TX switch or on a different router.)
If I'm barking up the wrong tree here, then I want to know why it seems to work in all areas except getting a link (and of course, through the link that it wants to have but does not, being able to work with my other computers and the Internet.)