Macintosh II Daynaport and networking

[ironborn65]

Hi all,

I hope you all in good health, lockdown brings me in the basement often then usual 

My challenge is about networking my Macintosh II.

I have:

1)

8mb RAM

system 7.5.5

scsi2sd (irrelevant)

Daynaport (st) E/II card

2)

Installed Apple network software 1.5.1

Installed Daynaport driver 7.7.1 , specifically for (st) E/II

3)

hardware diagnostic identifies the card correctly, no errors found

software diagnostic identifies correctly the drivers

3)

appletalk enabled with control panel chooser

control panel network set to Ethernet

macTCP shows me the ethernet address

macTCP set to 10.0.0.5 (I have hurdles to set class B or C but it does not matter with this topology)

connected using RJ45 to a stupid hub where a ubunbu laptop is also connected

4)

the green led at the top of the card flashes only if the cable is connected

apparently there aren't the usual yellow/green leds close to the RJ45

the cable has been tested

BUT

the led in the hub never turns on, this is the most frustrating issue

the ping to the ubunbu never works

Can someone provide an input, an idea to work out?

Shall I assume the NIC is broken?

thanks so much

all the best

Pierfranco

 

[karrots]

Sounds like your hub may not be negotiating speed. Is it a gigabit hub?

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Sounds like your hub may not be negotiating speed. Is it a gigabit hub?

This!

Most old Macs need an old router or network switch/hub that can negotiate 10mb connection in order to work.  

Modern network equipment that autonegotiates doesn't properly sense the signal or something, and indicates it's working but doesn't.

 

[karrots]

Even back in the day auto negotiate was troublesome. It was quite common to hard set speed and duplex.

 

[ironborn65]

Sounds like your hub may not be negotiating speed. Is it a gigabit hub?

Hi and thanks for providing feedbacks.

It's and old hub, it supports 10 and 100mb, the led can be yellow (10mb) or green (100mb), no gb supported.

 

[ironborn65]

Hi all,

I'm not an expert in TCP/IP, does it make a difference if I try a null ethernet cable, direct pc to pc with no hub?

I've almost lost hope

best

PF

 

[ironborn65]

Even back in the day auto negotiate was troublesome. It was quite common to hard set speed and duplex.

Hi, how can I fix speed and duplex?

tks

PF

 

[cheesestraws]

Hi, how can I fix speed and duplex?

Your easiest option here is probably to get a reputable old 10mbit hub and connect it to your switch upstream, then connect old stuff to your hub.

Manually setting speed/duplex is different for every kind of switch, and a lot of lower-end switches can't manually set it at all.

 

[Daniël]

This!

Most old Macs need an old router or network switch/hub that can negotiate 10mb connection in order to work.  

Modern network equipment that autonegotiates doesn't properly sense the signal or something, and indicates it's working but doesn't.

I've found 2000s HP switches to be fairly painless for vintage computer use. My €8 thrift find HP ProCurve 1800-24G, which is my main switch for all my computers, happily will talk with my old Macintoshes, be it my SE/30's PDS NIC, or the AAUI out of late 68ks and early PowerPCs. Never had to touch any setting on it to get it to work with that 10Mb/s stuff.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

I've found 2000s HP switches to be fairly painless for vintage computer use. My €8 thrift find HP ProCurve 1800-24G, which is my main switch for all my computers, happily will talk with my old Macintoshes, be it my SE/30's PDS NIC, or the AAUI out of late 68ks and early PowerPCs. Never had to touch any setting on it to get it to work with that 10Mb/s stuff.

Yes exactly. The more enterprise and the older it is the better it works. A 2020 Dlink router likely won’t work with a vintage Mac. 

 

[cheesestraws]

be it my SE/30's PDS NIC, or the AAUI out of late 68ks and early PowerPCs

By the time all these things came along, though, the standards were much more stable.

Even back in the day auto negotiate was troublesome. It was quite common to hard set speed and duplex.

Absolutely.  Look at this in context:

Autonegotiation is meant to be backwards-compatible with 10BaseT.  But what it's backwards-compatible with is standard 10BaseT, because ... that's really the only thing it can be defined to be compatible with.  But the 10BaseT standard itself wasn't published until the end of 1990, and there was a lot of stuff using pre-release pseudo-10BaseT or earlier manufacturer-defined variants.  And mostly those will play with each other—kind of—but they won't play with autonegotiation, because... honestly, given that there wasn't really a standard for them to adhere to, or the standard was very new, they weren't adhering to it very well, just well enough to make it more or less work.  And autonegotiation is hairy.

Most modern switches will still talk "mostly 10BaseT" if you turn autonegotiation off.  As @MrFahrenheit noted, enterprisey switches may work better, mostly because they're tested more with weird old stuff.  But I use just a netgear 8 port "smart" gig switch, because it was reasonably cheap, and that's been fine for me, so long as I fiddle with the duplex/speed settings.

 

[ironborn65]

interessing discussion guys. Since I am unable to get an. old enterprise switch I believe that the only way I have to network my Mac II is. to find a BNC router instead plus cables and terminators (I have another network card) or an AUI to RJ45 Ethernet adapter. Will I find other obstacles?

 

[cheesestraws]

AUI to RJ45 Ethernet adapter

These aren't particularly hard to find, in my experience and might be a sensible option: certainly the ones I have here aren't too picky.  This would probably be what I'd try first.

I believe that the only way I have to network my Mac II is. to find a BNC router instead plus cables and terminators

You may find it cheaper to find an old 10BaseT hub, which will probably behave better with your card.  At least here, I can get those for nearly no money at all.

 

[dan.dem]

Another connection example:

To connect an old Performa 475 (Asanté PDS card, RJ45 @ 10 Mbit, card produced in 1990) with an tangerine iBook (2000) I had to use a (very cheap, 12 € new) 10 Mbit Ethernet hub in between. The Ur-iBook has 100/10 Mbit Ether. This gave me over 700 kB/s copy speed using AppleShare-IP and OpenTransport.

I think the very old (1990) Ethernet adapters don't like the negotiation process. I faintly remember setting options like full/half/no duplex and package size(?) had no effect on compatibility in my case.

Cabling: Everything below Gigabit needs some attention. Only Gigabit and later (around 2001+ on higher end Macs, 2006 on lower end) doesn't care about cable polarity.

For connecting a device to a 10 or 10/100 Mbit hub (should also apply to switches) I use standard 4-wire (the cheaper ones) non-cross-over cables.

To connect two pre-Gigabit devices directly (without hub or switch in-between) I use 4-wire (the cheaper ones) cross-over cables.

I also had success connecting 10/100 Mbit (iBook, early G4 PowerMac) to Gigabit Ether (2006, 2012 MacBook/MacBookPro) with any (cross-over or non-cross-over) 4-wire cable. (I don't own Cat 5 8-wire Ethernet cables, so it's untested by me.)

It is a bit similar to serial port cabling: If you have modems between your computers, use plain ordinary serial cables. If you go directly computer to computer, use cross over cables (same as printer cables, I think). The ethernet adapters are in fact some sort of modems.

 

[cheesestraws]

I think the very old (1990) Ethernet adapters don't like the negotiation process. I faintly remember setting options like full/half/no duplex and package size(?) had no effect on compatibility in my case.

That sounds about the right date.  As I noted above, the 10BaseT standard (that autonegotiation relies on) wasn't finished/published until the end of 1990, so I would expect things from before that time not to work very well with modern equipment.

Everything below Gigabit needs some attention. Only Gigabit and later (around 2001+ on higher end Macs, 2006 on lower end) doesn't care about cable polarity.

The thing that means you don't have to worry about straight/crossover is called Auto-MDIX, and it works by basically rearranging the pinout of the Ethernet jack on the fly until it finds something that works.  You're right that this didn't become ubiquitous until Gigabit, but a reasonably decent reasonably modern 100mbit switch will likely also have it; there's nothing magical about gigabit that makes it impossible with lower speed

 

[dan.dem]

@cheesestraws Thank you for clarifying this matter. My remarks are solely based on empirical try and error but compromised by nearly two decades of memory blurring.

My setup was used as a back up station in the early 2000s. Second hand SCSI-CD burners had become really cheap then and often were more reliable. I saved the iBook's data onto the Performa's disk and burned it to a CD eventually.

BTW: The 1990 time stamp on the LC-PDS Ethernet card makes it a very early specimen considering that the first Mac with a compatible slot was the original Mac LC issued October 1990.

 

[cheesestraws]

BTW: The 1990 time stamp on the LC-PDS Ethernet card makes it a very early specimen considering that the first Mac with a compatible slot was the original Mac LC issued October 1990.

Wow, yes, that must be.  Someone rushed to get that released .

 

[johnklos]

I'm not an expert in TCP/IP, does it make a difference if I try a null ethernet cable, direct pc to pc with no hub?

Whether the cable is a crossover or not matters for 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps, so between the computer and the 100 Mbps switch it matters. Between the computer and a modern Mac, it doesn't, because gigabit uses all 8 pins and auto-crosses over.

I've had certain older cards not work even when the port on the switch was manually configured to 10 Mbps.

What has worked reliably, though, is to keep around cheesy older ethernet hubs / switches. The cheaper, the better. I have three 10 / 100 Mbps switches which are cheap, no-brand devices which work with older Macs where no modern switch will work.

 

[ironborn65]

ok, I found this 3com OfficeConnect 3c16701 at a reasonable price (relatively speaking)

it's 10mb/sec only a with BNC, no AUI

it seems to be old enough 

https://www.ebay.it/itm/3com-OfficeConnect-3c16701-8-porte-8x-rj45-1-COAX-External-HUB-EXCL-L4-AL/184365263465?hash=item2aed06aa69%3Ag%3Am4wAAOSw7HlfDzQ3&LH_ItemCondition=4

Shall I give it a chance ? Not a binding opinion of course, there is no liability

or this

https://www.ebay.it/itm/DIGICOM-Switch-8-Porte-10-100-Mbps-colore-Grigio-8E4071-Mini-Switch-8-L6-FH/183900950065?_trkparms=aid%3D1110012%26algo%3DSPLICE.SOIPOST%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20200420083544%26meid%3D032447fcbd76481aa8e70d00f2e0bcc1%26pid%3D100008%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D10%26sd%3D184365263465%26itm%3D183900950065%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DPromotedSellersOtherItemsV2&_trksid=p2047675.c100008.m2219

but it has 100mb/sec