SE/30 + Asante Ethernet: close, but no cigar

[Huxley]

Howdy gang,

So I recently picked up a lovely little SE/30 from our very own khannonnd - he supplied the Mac, I supplied a keyboard and mouse. It boots nicely from the original internal HDD (no frozen-spindle syndrome here, thankfully) and appears functional overall. Other than just being very fond of SE/30's in general, this one is of special interest since it features an Asante Ethernet board - something I've been looking to acquire for years without much luck.

This Mac currently boots to a lightly-customized System 7.5 (plain 7.5 that is, not 7.5.x), and has a few applications that could theoretically use Ethernet for connectivity: Netscape Navigator 2.x, NCSA Telnet 2.6, Fetch FTP, etc.... but in no case have I been able to get any communication in or out of the machine. I've been playing with it on my desk at work connected to our corporate LAN (and I've also tried running it into my modern desktop Mac with AirPort-to-Ethernet sharing enabled) but I just keep going in circles, and I can't tell at this point if I'm missing some essential driver, or if I have MacTCP mis-configured, or if there's a hardware failure at play here. 

So, here's my "let's start from scratch and think this through logically" question: I'm not seeing any files anywhere on the drive that seem directly related to the Ethernet board - nothing labeled Asante in the System Folder, etc. Given this, is it even realistic to expect that System 7.5 could pick up an IP address even if all the Control Panels are configured properly?

Thanks for any hints in the right direction - I haven't paid khannonnd for this Mac yet, and I'd love to know if the Ethernet setup actually works before we figure out a mutually-agreeable price!

 

[BlueBoy]

So I recently got a Performa 636CD and put in a farallon 10baseT comm slot card in. When I tried to connect it to my 2011 MacBook Pro, it didn't work until I went into the advanced settings for Ethernet in the Network System Preferences and manually set the speed to 10baseT half-duplex. The 636 Ethernet was too old to autonegotiate the speed with the newer Mac. On the other hand, hooking the old Mac onto my network with a switch works fine, but, for you, it will depend on the feature set of your work's network setup as to whether it will connect correctly or not.

As to the software, some 3rd party Ethernet adapters work with the built-in drivers, IIRC. You may have to dig some up, though. Try MacGUI or the Mac garden for those.

To check to see in its at least talking, connect it to your modern Mac and make sure the modern machine is making a valid connection (not reporting "Cable Unplugged" in the Ethernet section of the Network System Preferences. Again, you may have to force a speed and duplex setting in system preferences. Try them all to find the best one.

Good luck!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

If he had it apart to check it out for you there might be a simple explanation. The ribbon cable to the breakout board is unkeyed, so he might have inadvertently reinstalled it backwards.

 

[Huxley]

So I recently got a Performa 636CD and put in a farallon 10baseT comm slot card in. When I tried to connect it to my 2011 MacBook Pro, it didn't work until I went into the advanced settings for Ethernet in the Network System Preferences and manually set the speed to 10baseT half-duplex. The 636 Ethernet was too old to autonegotiate the speed with the newer Mac. On the other hand, hooking the old Mac onto my network with a switch works fine, but, for you, it will depend on the feature set of your work's network setup as to whether it will connect correctly or not.

As to the software, some 3rd party Ethernet adapters work with the built-in drivers, IIRC. You may have to dig some up, though. Try MacGUI or the Mac garden for those.

To check to see in its at least talking, connect it to your modern Mac and make sure the modern machine is making a valid connection (not reporting "Cable Unplugged" in the Ethernet section of the Network System Preferences. Again, you may have to force a speed and duplex setting in system preferences. Try them all to find the best one.

Good luck!

Super helpful tips and info here - thanks! I never thought to tinker with the settings of the modern Mac to ensure that they could communicate, so I'll definitely look into that. When I've tried running the SE/30 into the LAN at my office, I've used a small Linksys switch but didn't get too far. I'm going to bring the old Mac home over the holiday break and test there - it's entirely possible that the LAN at my office is too heavily restricted to allow what I'm trying to do, and now I'm wondering if one of our network admins hasn't been scratching his head while looking at network-access attempts that look 25 years out of date...

 

[joethezombie]

is it even realistic to expect that System 7.5 could pick up an IP address even if all the Control Panels are configured properly?

If you are trying to use DHCP to pick up an IP, I could never get that to work. Maybe try and assign the IP and subnet manually?

 

[jrwil]

Huxley,

In the past couple of weeks, I have succeeded in getting an SE/30 on my modern network with a MacCon ethernet card, so I think I can help you.

The one piece of software that is going to help you the most here is the Asante EtherTalk installer, available here on this dude's site as asante5_6_1.sea.hqx — https://www.fsf.net/~adam/

That software claims to install the correct TCP/IP applications for as low as System 6, although I haven't tried anything other than 7.5.5.

You're going to need to get that file onto the SE/30, of course, which will take a floppy. Format the disk in the SE/30, then, if you have a USB floppy drive and a PC, you can move the file to the disk by installing the program MacDisk. You may first need to install the demo of another program, MacDrive, in order for MacDisk to function correctly. Don't pay for MacDrive.

Keep in mind that your Asante card is 10baseT and will not function if your router is pushing gigabit speeds to it. This is easily remedied by connecting the card to a WiFi bridge or older router that will either dynamically change the speed of the connection down to 10/100, or let you choose the speed in the router settings. I have mine plugged into a Netgear N300 range extender, available on Amazon or even on the shelf at Best Buy, which is connected to a 2.4GHz WiFi signal from my modern router, and that worked fine. I believe I entered the MAC address of the SE/30 into the settings on the range extender to give it a static IP address, but that may not have been necessary.

Also, check the switch on the back of the Asante daughter card, next to the Ethernet port. If yours is like mine, it needs to be in the "top" position.

I've got my SE/30 online with email, file sharing and printing, so once you get it online and need some advice in those areas, hit me up.

John

 

[Huxley]

Fantastic info - thank you! I recently picked up a working Wallstreet PowerBook here which I can probably use to make a floppy to transfer that file (or maybe I can do it via AppleTalk if I can just scrounge up one of those goofy round serial cables...). I'll definitely ping you again if/when I get stuck.

 

[jrwil]

Sure thing. Once you get that software installed and have it connected to a router providing the right speed, the TCP/IP control panel configured to "use DHCP server" (your router) should pop in with your IP address, gateway, etc. That's the eureka moment.

 

[james_w]

I've got my SE/30 online with email, file sharing and printing, so once you get it online and need some advice in those areas, hit me up.

Hey John, I'm really interested - what application are you using for email?

 

[jrwil]

Hey John, I'm really interested - what application are you using for email?

Short answer: 

Musashi 3.4.1.

Long answer: 

Email on the SE/30 is tricky. No clients (to my knowledge) support SSL, required by all modern email servers, and that limits you right out of the gate. The bare minimum modern standard you need is SMTP authentication, and only a handful of clients for System 7.5.5 support it (Musashi, SweetMail, Green, Mulberry).

Even if you have one of those clients, you need a modern email service that will let you log in without SSL, which do exist, although who knows for how long. I pointed a subdomain I have to a service called ZazzoWeb, which is about $2 a month for an email address. I forwarded my Gmail to that address, and set my Gmail address as the "Reply-To" in the email client on the SE/30. It works.

Others have successfully implemented an SSL tunnel to get their Gmail on their 68k Mac with an older client, but I gave up on it. The upside to my method is you don't have to have a helper Mac. There is also a utility floating around called Baton Mail that was used to add SMTP Auth capabilities to older Mac clients by sending outgoing mail to Baton Mail, but I had limited success with it.

Musashi works very well with only minor hiccups and quirks. I prefer SweetMail which you can customize to no end, but the typing lag is pretty bad, even with max RAM.

Cheers.

 

[james_w]

Yeah, the SSL is the killer issue, thanks for the tips! Unlikely I'll go through all those hoops, but glad to know I wasn't wrong when I attempted it and concluded it was a bit too much hassle

 

[jrwil]

Hosting your own mail server is another intriguing possibility. Then again, those are just different hoops!

 

[retrobecanes]

I have an SE/30 with 32 Megs of RAM running 7.5.3.  It is equipped with an Asante MacCon+ ethernet card.  When I connect the ethernet card to my router (NetGear Prosafe switch) I do get a green light at the card and at the router and some activity.  I have installed the Asante drivers referemced in the post above and the installation reported as being successful.  The MacTCP is set manually.  However when I go to 'network' under the control panel and attempt to set it to ethertalk, the system responds with "could not switch to ethertalk due to an error. Your connection will be reset to LocalTalk."  I have tried the Asante Troubleshooter v1.7.1 but the only test that passes is the memory buffer test.  The other tests result in a NIC transmission failed.  The ADLS 1.6 tool from Asante fails also but I assume that this is due to the fact that I couldn't select ethertalk.  Any help would be appreciated.

 

[retrobecanes]

Hosting your own mail server is another intriguing possibility. Then again, those are just different hoops!

Note that I have had success with the Stunnel application installed on a RaspberryPi.  STunnel provides the necessary SSL/TLS security to connect to modern email services such as Gmail.  The email client on the vintage computer can simply rely on password-based authentication and is pointed to the raspberryIP for both its POP and SMTP servers (on different ports of course).  Stunnel then listens to requests against those ports and relays the requests via SSL/TLS to Gmail to send and/or retrieve mail.  You can also run Stunel on a Windows PC on your network and I assume that a similar application is available on Mac OS as well.  I personally use this approach to send/receive emails from my Apple IIGS via the SAM2 email client.  It works flawlessly.

 

[jrwil]

That is cool. Having it on a Pi would make for an efficient setup. This guide seems straightforward enough: https://charlesreid1.com/wiki/RaspberryPi/SSH_Stunnel— is this more or less how you set it up? What email client do you prefer?

As for your ethernet issue — I don't think you should be seeing the Network control panel at all. You should be dealing with the TCP/IP panel, configured to using Ethernet and DHCP server. Do you have Open Transport turned on by using the Network Software Selector, found in the Apple Extras folder?

 

[retrobecanes]

Thanks, I went ahead and now selected OT from the Network Software Selector and I do indeed now see TCP/IP as part of the control panels.  It is set as connect to Ethernet and configured to using DHCP sever.  All fields now indicate 'will be supplied by server' and the 'search domains' box is blank.  What other settings do I need to do/enter?

As for the Stunnel, the link that you have is a good reference but I can provide much simpler installation notes if you are interested.  I don't have an email client of choice for the Mac yet, I have only used it with the IIGS where SAM2 is excellent as an email client and easy to configure.

 

[jrwil]

Search domains can be blank. Now, assuming your network card doesn't have any issues, and that the switch on it is on the right position, the rest is up to your router. Reboot and see if you get anything in TCP/IP. Confirm that the router port is set for 10mbps speeds and not gigabit speeds. I put in the SE/30's MAC address in my router and assigned it a static IP address, but not sure if I needed to. If you want your MAC address, go to File > Get Info in the TCP/IP panel.

I'd indeed be interested to hear more about your Stunnel/Pi setup. Tried to do an SSL tunnel on my modern iMac and could get the 68k email client to connect and begin to send a message, but it would always stall.

 

[rsolberg]

Those fields in the TCP/IP control panel usually display "Will be supplied by server" until an application tries to access the network, such as a web browser.

 

[retrobecanes]

I placed the switch in the top position as per your earlier post.  Now when I do the TCP/IP get info, none of the addresses are available for the macintosh, the hardware address or the router.  It only specifies the addresses of Open Transport and TCP/IP, both as 1.1.  Now I assume that my network doesn't have any issues but are there any tests that can be performed against it to make sure?  Via the control panels' AppleTalk, do you also set AppleTalk to connect via Ethernet?

To install/run STunnel on the Raspi:

install Stunnel: sudo apt-get install stunnel4

to edit stunnel config file (see below): sudo vim /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf

run Stunnel: sudo stunnel4 /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf

For Stunnel, here is the simple config file that you will need on the Raspi:

 
[POP]
client=yes
accept = 110
connect =pop.gmail.com:995
[sMTP]
client-yes
accept =25
connect = smtp.gmail.com:465
 
In your email client, specify the IP of the Raspi for the POP server (via port 110) and for the SMTP (via port 25).
 
Setting up STUNNEL SMTP on port 25 requires the removal of the EXIM4 mail server which otherwise uses port 25 as well.  In order to remove exim4, run the following:
sudo update-rc.d exim4 remove (remove from automatic startup)
remove package:
apt-get remove exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light
rm -r /var/log/exim4/
 
When that's done, restart the raspi with a 'system-restart' and then run a sudo netstart -lptn to make sure that ports 25 and 110 are now assigned to STUNNEL and no longer to EXIM4.