LC II PDS Ethernet to iMac G4

[Snial]

Hi folks,

I have an Apple Ethernet PDS card: "Ethernet LC Twisted Pair Card: ASSY 820-0532-B". The LCII (really a Performa 400) has System 7.1 + Extensions: Apple Ethernet LC (10 Base T socket); EtherTalk Prep; EtherTalk Phase 2; Network Extension all installed. I have MacTCP and Network control panels installed. AppleTalk is enabled. I thought the first step in getting our iMac G4/1GHz to talk to the LC would be to switch AppleTalk to EtherTalk (does anything work if I don't?). I did a PRAM reset, but when I tried to use the Network control panel I got:

"Could not switch to Ethertalk due to an error. Your connection will be reset to LocalTalk."

Do I actually need EtherTalk to do this stuff, or will MacTCP just simply use the Ethernet card? The Green LED comes on. I've now tried connected from my iMac G4 on en0 (which is Ethernet), using ping -I en0 192.168.0.50 (MacTCP says that's its address). I've tried to Run Eudora to get MacTCP to start up, so that Ping might be supported as per this thread:

LC Ethernet Not Working 7.5.5

I'm trying to bring my old LC back online after replacing a failed hard drive. Back in the day, it was a web server and I had it serving up a tutorial on how to make your own old mac web server. Since installing the new HDD, I've upgraded the OS to 7.5.5 again (drive came with 7.5.3...

68kmla.org

It'd be nice to use the Ethernet card as it would make transfers easier than using a Zip drive, I could go from LC to iMac G4 to USB then, assuming I can find a simple way to do ftp without ssh.

 

[robin-fo]

Do you connect using a Switch or direct cable?

 

[Snial]

Do you connect using a Switch or direct cable?

Thanks for the reply, by a direct cable. The iMac G4 connects to the internet via Airport. On boot up, the LC's ethernet socket's LED blinks green then goes off for about 0.5s, then stays green. I couldn't see any flickering when I tried to ping from the iMac G4 on (as I imagine) eth0, the ethernet port.

 

[robin-fo]

Do you use a crossover Ethernet cable? It likely won‘t work without.

 

[Snial]

Do you use a crossover Ethernet cable? It likely won‘t work without.

OK, thanks for the reply. I think everything upward from an iBook G3/600 automatically works out if it's a cross-over cable doesn't it? As it happens it's not a cross-over.

 

[zefrenchtoon]

OK, thanks for the reply. I think everything upward from an iBook G3/600 automatically works out if it's a cross-over cable doesn't it? As it happens it's not a cross-over.

It does, the problem is from the LC card which is not compatible and so, does not detect any "good" signal on the line and shutdown itself

 

[Snial]

It does, the problem is from the LC card which is not compatible and so, does not detect any "good" signal on the line and shutdown itself

Thanks, I thought only one end needed to be able to detect if it's cross-over, but you're saying both ends do? Or are you saying that the LC card is particularly bad in this respect? I'm pretty sure I have a crossover somewhere though.

 

[Mk.558]

There should be nothing wrong with the LC card.

MacTCP is used for TCP connections (i.e. FTP, Telnet, SSH, ...) and unless AFP over TCP is used, then MacTCP has nothing to do with AppleTalk. Generally the only time MacTCP does anything via AppleTalk is via MacIP, which requires a MacIP server. For your scenario here, MacTCP is not a factor.

I don't recall MacTCP explicitly supporting ping requests, so if you try to ping your LC box, it won't reply to pings. Instead use a program like MacTCP Watcher to ping outside servers from the LC box.

AFP would be the fastest connection to use, but FTP is compatible with just about anything. The original post isn't clear on which one you plan on using. Both would be good though.

I suspect the error is because of a driver issue. I would create a fresh virgin system installation in a VM, copy it over, then reinstall NSI-1.5.1, AS WS 3.5. I believe most LC cards are picked up by the NSI software.

 

[mikes-macs]

I always use this site for reference on networking Macs and determining compatibility.

Classic Mac Networking

 

[Mk.558]

Update is still in the works, should be done sometime end of summer maybe end of year. Notably the Chart is at least 50% more accurate this time.

Today's work: A/UX 2.0.0 to Netatalk VM file server.

 

[Snial]

Hi folks,

I've made a bit of progress. I found a genuine cross-over cable. I set up my iMac G4 running Tiger to share AirPort over Ethernet. I then powered on my LC II (System 7.1, MacTCP). I Enabled ftp services from System Prefs on the iMac G4 (it also enables the firewall too, can't seem to turn that off). The LC II appears to have a sensible ip address (192.168.0.22). I can see that when I run Fetch 2.1.2 the Network Utility Info tab shows that Sent Packets and Recv Packets increments on both the en0 (Ethernet) and en1 (Wifi) and doesn't when I stop the connection. However, Fetch doesn't ever manage to Open Connection. The iMac G4 only seems to send one packet back. But keeps getting Recv packets from the Fetch.

I couldn't successfully ping the LC II from the iMac G4. I couldn't run iCab Pre_2.82 (Type 2 error). Wannabe 68K expects the Thread Manager and Drag Manager, and both appear to be installed. I tried enabling web-sharing on the iMac G4 and tried to download from http://192.168.0.22/~UserName, but it doesn't get beyond "Initiating Connection". I've also tried enabling AppleTalk (Personal File Sharing?) from the iMac G4 and trying to find it in the Chooser, but there's nothing there.

So, progress, but no proper success yet!

OK, looking at:

Classic Mac Networking

It says that if I'm running 7.1 on my LCII, the highest compatible AppleTalk on Mac OS X is 10.2, I need to be running 7.5.3 to talk to Mac OS X 10.4. However, I was able to activate AppleTalk via Ethernet on the iMac G4, and then, amazingly, I could see the iMac G4 server from the chooser my LC II and the LC II's AppleTalk server appeared on "My Network" . However, I wasn't able to connect, because the AFP was incompatible.

Nevertheless, that's the first real proof that there's been some real communication (apart from raw IP packets).