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

[jrwil]

Thanks for the Raspberry Pi info! What model device do you have, just out of curiosity?

The AppleTalk control panel won't affect your ethernet connection. The router side is important because many modern routers won't step down the speed of the port. In the case of my ISP, for instance, they block the ability to change the port speed because they don't provide support for equipment old enough to require 10mbps. 

Log in to your router — probably via 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 — and check out its control panel to see if you can change the port speed. If it's giving the MacCon gigabit speeds, it just won't work.

Make sure the switch position is right for your model card — it could be different from mine — but I'll bet that's probably the correct spot.

 

[retrobecanes]

For the Raspi, I have a model B (2 USB port).  I will double check the router side to make sure but mine can go from 10 to 1000 so I assume that it is ok.

Does the Asante Troubleshooter software pass all the tests for your MacCon?  Mine fails them all except for the memory buffer.

 

[jrwil]

It passes buffer, NIC and loopback.

That other utility in there also reminded me that it's a MacCon 30si, FWIW.

 

[james_w]

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.

Oh yes I'd heard about using a Raspberry Pi for tunnelling before and had totally forgotten - thank you so much for all the info and guidance. I may even get time to try this out over the holiday season

 

[retrobecanes]

I find it interesting that my main Asante board (the one that connects to the mobo) and its daughter board are labeled differently.  The main board reads "Mac CON for IIsi, SE30, P/N 09-00005-00 REV c2".  The daughter board on the other hand read "MacCon+ TK/TP rev B".  When it comes to installing the Asante drivers onto the SE/30 under 7.5.3 it makes things a little confusing.  By default the Asante driver installer v5.6.1, if left in 'easy install' mode, proposes to install the "Asante Ethertalk NuBus/PDS Driver".  But is that indeed the correct choice for the cards that I have installed?  What driver and driver version would you recommend for the card that I have?

 

[jrwil]

When I installed mine, I just did the easy install. By the part number, it looks like you may have a MacCon 30ie. I don't recall if mine has different markings on each board, but I don't think that should cause you much concern.

I uploaded the manual for MacCon ethernet cards for you here.

My guess is you have the software right. You want to knock out all the variables one by one. I would make absolutely sure your router port speed is correct, since that would be the simplest solution to remedy.

 

[jrwil]

Looking back at the table of products in that document, if your card is a 30ie, it does not support 10baseT connections.

Verify your model by running the other utility in the same folder as the Troubleshooting utility.

 

[Huxley]

Hi again guys,

I'm working from home this week with a pretty light workload, so I'm finally getting to apply some real time to getting this SE/30 talking to the world. I've got it set up on our kitchen counter and connected via Ethernet cable directly to a Netgear Wifi extender. The Wifi extender has a sensing Ethernet port and should be okay talking to a 10-megabit device. The LED on the Ethernet card on the back of the machine shows occasional activity. I've got the MacTCP control panel set as directed higher in this thread (basically set to grab an IP dynamically via DHCP and with the correct Class C subnet), and I'm testing with the three network-capable programs on the machine (Netscape 2.0, Fetch, and NCSA Telnet).

Currently, I'm stuck. When I look at the MacTCP control panel, it shows my IP as "192.0.0.0" until one of my three apps tries to connect, at which time that IP changes to "192.0.0.22" which cannot be correct - based on my router settings, it should be getting a 192.168.x.x address. None of the apps are able to connect, with Fetch timing out while connecting to my local FTP server and Telnet + Netscape both giving their equivalents of DNS errors if I try to browse to a URL or known-good Telnet host. Also, the status page for my Wifi extender never shows anything connected to Ethernet.

Any other suggestions? Obviously getting the actual Asante drivers onto the machine is probably going to help (still working on that - I think I just need to locate one of the old-style Mac serial cables so I can download the drivers on my Wallstreet PowerBook and then AppleTalk them to the SE/30), but from everything I've read here and elsewhere, it *should* be working with the setup I've currently got.

Feels crazymaking to be so close!

 

[jrwil]

You're on the right track. The Asante disk will install the correct drivers for the card and ensure you have Open Transport networking available (accessible via Macintosh HD > apple extras > network software selector) and the TCP/IP control panel (different from MacTCP.) 

Is the floppy drive in your PowerBook working?

 

[Huxley]

Good advice, thanks. In the time since I posted my update a couple hours ago, I've tried following the directions here for MacTCP (and I've assigned a specific IP to my SE30 on my router), and now Netscape gives me a "Unable to create network socket" error. 

The PowerBook is "new" in the sense that I just bought it from a seller here, so I'm not sure about the floppy drive. Good point though - I'll either find a serial cable or just see if I can dig up some floppies somewhere. 

Frustration aside, this is fun!

 

[rsolberg]

You may want to look in your extender's configuration to see if there's a way to force the Ethernet port to 10Mbps and half duplex. Some of these old Asante and Farallon cards seem to send "junk" Ethernet frames that cause autonegotiation on 10/100 and 10/100/1000 ports to fail. The modern device will usually show no cable connection, even when there's a lamp lit on the old Mac card. I think the card is sending the "junk" and waiting for an echo to determine if it has a connection.

 

[Huxley]

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/

Hi again! Quick question: is anyone else here able to access that link? The site appears to be dead for me, and the only other "download links" I'm finding around the web for that specific file are spammy "driver archive" sites that don't actually have the file (which you can only verify after clicking through a bunch of BS ads and 'puzzles'). Anyone have a working link for that archive?

 

[just.in.time]

I never got MacTCP to work correctly with DHCP on my SE/30. I had to give it a fixed IP address and told my netgear router to reserve that address for the MAC address associated to my Ethernet card in the SE/30. If you do get DHCP up and running that would be awesome, is love to get it working on mine.

 

[jrwil]

is anyone else here able to access that link?

I may have kicked a bear by linking to that site. Here's my copy of the Asante drivers.

 

[Bunsen]

Just for funsies, I dumped that link into the wayback machine and managed to download a few files.  If the one you're after doesn't work, try a different date (via the calendar bar at the top).

 

[Huxley]

So here's an interesting update:

After a full day of fun-but-fruitless tinkering, I decided that maybe my software isn't the root of the issue here. I just cracked open the SE/30 and took a close look at the Asante PDS card, daughter card, the cable, and the Mac's logic board. The Asante gear appears to be in good shape, and as best I can tell by matching the faded white paint-dots on the cables and connectors, the cable has been seated properly all along. 

When I extracted the logic board though, I spotted something odd: a definitely-hand-soldered patch on the IC labeled "UB10" connecting one of the UB10 pins to a small yellow block labeled "C3". Here's a quick album I just uploaded so you can see what I'm talking about.

Any idea what purpose this patch is serving? I popped a fresh PRAM batter in and reassembled everything and I'm back where I started (functional Mac, semi-functional Asante card that blinks but doesn't ever seem to connect).

Feels like every time I get close, something else pops up here, but I suppose that's the fun of this project! Also, I'm a dummy and the "serial cables" I bought yesterday aren't actually serial cables, so I'm limited to shuttling files from my iMac > Wallstreet > SE/30 on single floppy disks... sigh.

 

[CC_333]

Hi,

I assembled and repaired that SE/30 for Kendall, and I swapped the logic board because the one he provided SimasiMac'ed, and a simple recap didn't seem to get it going again. That jumper is a bypass for C3 (which is a surface-mount tantalum capacitor) to UB10 (sound chip), as the solder pad had rotted away, and the remaining trace was a lost cause, so I just probed it out with my continuity checker and stuck the jumper there.

There were no other problems with that board, fortunately, although sound will die if that jumper is removed.
 

Regarding the network card, I believe I installed the cables for the breakout board properly, but it's possible something got damaged (I swapped that as well, because the original blew a capacitor when I powered it on).

c

 

[Huxley]

Hi,

I assembled and repaired that SE/30 for Kendall, and I swapped the logic board because the one he provided SimasiMac'ed, and a simple recap didn't seem to get it going again. That jumper is a bypass for C3 (which is a surface-mount tantalum capacitor) to UB10 (sound chip), as the solder pad had rotted away, and the remaining trace was a lost cause, so I just probed it out with my continuity checker and stuck the jumper there.

There were no other problems with that board, fortunately, although sound will die if that jumper is removed.

Regarding the network card, I believe I installed the cables for the breakout board properly, but it's possible something got damaged (I swapped that as well, because the original blew a capacitor when I powered it on).

c

Thanks for the background info! Kendall just filled me in on the same info, and I've got a bit of whiplash - I was initially worried that I had some hacked-together motherboard in here, just waiting to short out and die... but now I'm delighted to learn that I've got a well-tested and recapped board, ready to hum along for another 30 years...

Also, some positive news: I’ve been fighting the Asante card all day with effectively zero success: I managed to shuttle the correct Asante driver package from my iMac to my old PowerBook, and from there to the SE/30 via floppy… but it made no difference. I went on a multi-hour detour trying to get an oddball SCSI CD-RW drive working (still haven’t quite gotten that one pinned down), and then I went back to the Asante. I gave up trying to get it talking to my router or iMac, and instead started trying to get it talking directly to the PowerBook using AppleTalk-over-Ethernet (aka EtherTalk), since moving the 19(!) disk images for the MacOS 7.5.3 update from the PowerBook to the SE/30 was agonizingly slow - definitely a good incentive to get some basic machine-to-machine communication going.

 
Every time I got the software set properly, the PowerBook would throw up a vague / annoying error message (“An error occurred attempting to use ethernet”) and it would stall out. I started diving deep into Google’s newsgroup archives, and found a 20+ year old clue: the Ethernet chip that Apple used in some PowerBooks and Performa’s of that era would *only* allow AppleTalk to be enabled if they *first* received a “signal good, ready to transmit” signal from the other end of the cable… which the SE/30 was probably waiting for too. They sat there like two introverts on a blind date, both waiting for the other to start talking. Arhghggh. 
 
On a whim I connected them both to an old Linksys Ethernet switch I pulled from my junk bin… AND IT WORKED. Holy crap. I still haven’t been able to get the SE/30 to actually pass any TCP/IP (aka Internet) data at all, but just the fact that it’s talking to the PowerBook over Ethernet is a great sign that the Asante card is physically good and I’m just wrestling with some wonky software.
 
Whew!
 

 

[khannonnd]

Awesome news!

 

[CC_333]

Excellent!

Since I have an SE/30 with ethernet, I should get myself one of those old switches so I can use that port for something (to that end, what model is your switch?)

c