LC 475 Questions

[GerrySch]

To All:

Hi, I'm Gerry.  I'm new here because I come from the Apple II world.  I belong (for some 30 years) to the still active OAC (Original Apple Corps) Users Group here in Santa Monica Ca.  With much of the group we discuss Macs since that's what people want help with but we also talk about Apple IIs and PCs.  I have a couple of Apple IIgs-es, and recently an Apple IIe card for the classic LC series Mac.  I bought an LC 475 and added 128 MBs of system RAM and upped the display RAM to 1 MB.  So far everything works great.  Then, in an effort to replace the noisy boot hard drive, I replaced it with a SCSI2SD card and a 32 GB miniSD card.  After a lot of head-scratching and trying to figure out which version of HD SC setup to use (as it turned out Drive Setup 1.5 worked best) I divided the SD card into 4 SCSI drives (0-3) and partitioned drive 0 for 6 partitions, 4-2GB HFS (for compatibility) and 2-32 MB ProDOS partitions along with the other three drives having 2-4 GB HFS hard drive partitions.  So there are 12 drives on the desktop.

While trying to install System 7.5.3 on the first HD, I had a lot of freezing and crashing issues and had to repair the partitions using Disk First Aid.  After completing the install and upgrading to 7.5.5, the system works well except when I copy files from virtual one drive partition to another (for backup), I still get periodic freezing/crashing.

Finally,  in an effort to get the LC 475 talking to other computers, I purchased an AsanteTalk bridge and got the LC 475 and my iMac G3, running 9.2.1, talking using Appletalk over TCP/IP on my network.

So, after all my head-banging I have some questions.  I have the iMac on my my network but it doesn't work well accessing the internet due to the age of the included browsers.  I also have a late 2008 Mac Pro on the network running OS X 10.11.6 (no more system OS upgrades).  I'd like for the LC 475 to access shared files on the Mac Pro so I can easily transfer software images but I can't get file sharing working, even between the iMac G3 and the Mac Pro. So my first question is there any way to share files between the LC 475 or the iMac G3 with the Mac Pro?  My research so far says no but hopefully someone will have a suggestion.  BTW, I can ping the iMac G3 from the Mac Pro but not the LC 475.

Second, Since I have 132 MBs of RAM in the LC 475, System 7.5.5 swallows it all up except for around 3.2 MBs according to the Finder.  If I pull out the 128 MB SIMM and reboot, the LC 475 reboots and along with 12 MBs of Virtual Memory, boots fine with again about 3.2 MBs of memory available according to the Finder.  How do I limit how much RAM System 7.5.5 swallows up so I can run as many applications as I want?  I've searched but, so far, I've seen no comments on 7.5.5 being a memory hog or how to control it.

Thank you for any insights you have.

Gerry

 

[GerrySch]

Sorry, I meant an early 2008 Mac Pro.  Great Machine.

 

[omidimo]

HI! I had a similar quandary and used FTP to transfer files from my Mac Pro to my Quadra 700. It was not the fastest but it generally worked as long as the Stuffit/DropStuff was working on the other end. I used the stock Server app to setup the FTP service and used Fetch. Got me where I needed to go. 

Another forum member, created a great link that works with older browsers : http://www.macfixer.com/vintage-software/ (Super thanks to I008com)

Hope this helped. 

 

[Byrd]

Welcome, Gerry - answering your second question, you must have 24-bit RAM addressing enabled not 32-bit RAM addressing which will let Mac OS utilise the entire 132MB RAM.  You can flick it over to 32-bit addressing in the Memory Control Panel.  

I believe however the Apple II card in your LC475 may have issue running in 32-bit addressing mode, however it can be switched over with a simple restart or different OS install.

 

[ArmorAlley]

Hi GerrySch,

SneakerNet gets harder and harder as the dIsparity in the age between the machines grows.

I always try to fit SCSI on all of my macs as a last resort, in case the networking plays up.

If you can get a PCIe SCSI card, like Adaptec 39160 or an ATTO UL5D (I think), that may work. You format an external harddrive as HFS+ under Mac OS 8.1 on your LC475 and mount it on your Mac Pro by means of the appropriate cable.

It does seem to me that you need a bridge machine. The pre-B&W G3 PowerMacs with PCI are the best and usually the cheapest (e.g. PM7300). These can talk with both the Mac Pro and with the LC475 & the iMac.

Personally, I burn CDs from our Mac Mini with files for the classic mac LAN. It serves as both backup and transmission.

all the best,

aa

 

[novusgordo]

I'm in the process of getting FireWire on my G3 AIO and my 8600 for this exact reason. All my classic Mac software is getting backed up on my Drobo, but if I need something for a classic Mac, I just copy it onto an HFS+ FireWire HD, mount that onto my G3, then copy it over onto an HFS SCSI HD.

 

[GerrySch]

First of all, my thanks to omidimo for the link to the Mac Fixer website.  It's perfect for the mac software I'm looking for.

To Byrd, I did some testing and whether the LC 475 is in 24-bit or 32-bit addressing mode, System 7.5.5 swallows up all the RAM as indicated through the Finder. The Apple IIe card requires 24-bit mode but when I'm not using it, I can switch over to 32-bit.  System 7.5.5 is the last OS to support 24-bit mode so I can't go higher without losing access to the IIe card.

To ArmorAlly and novusgordo, yes sneaker net is the best way for me right now.  Since 9.2.1 on the iMac G3 supports r/w for both HFS and HFS+ so I can use a thumbdrive to move files between the Mac Pro and iMac then use Appletalk to move files over to the LC 475.  I'm just lazy and want to do one jump file tranfers.

Thank you all for your time and suggestions.

Gerry

 

[just.in.time]

Hi Gerry,

What I do on my SE/30 is run an FTP server via NetPresense (spelling?), and use FileZilla on my MacBook to connect to it over the LAN. This allows me to push files directly to it without any middle steps

Edited to add: looks like omidimo does a similar setup to me, but the opposite direction. Either way should work.