Thin-Clienting Classic Mac OS?

[Gil]

Networking is fun. So fun, that I would like to have all my computers boot over the network, from a centralized network server (Windows 2000 Server, and Novell NetWare 4.11). Makes everything easier to manage when everything is in a centralized hard drive. So is it possible to boot Old World Macs into an OS 7, 8, 9 (most likely the latter) thats installed on a network server? Perhaps some sort of boot floppy that boots the AppleTalk protocol, connects to the server, and tells the computer to boot to that location from there?

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

(Yes, I am insane.)

 

[Christopher]

I know the "new" world mac's can do it. I'm not sure about OS 9, but it should work.

 

[porter]

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

Leave AppleTalk to self configure and use DHCP for TCP/IP and leave it at that.

Modern PC's can boot using PXE, Unix boxes can boot using bootp. But with PC's just leave that for the installation, unless running some OS designed to be diskless.

Windows is not designed to run diskless.

System 7 won't.

System 6 can run from a floppy, or in the case of some, boot from System 6 image held in ROM.

 

[paws]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBoot

Any New World Mac can do it, but only with OS 8.5 or later. Or was it 8.6? I don't remember. I've not done it. Only netbooting I've done is FreeBSD.

 

[register]

Might it be possible to net boot something like Sys. 7 using an Asante EN/SC adapter?

 

[paws]

Might it be possible to net boot something like Sys. 7 using an Asante EN/SC adapter?

It's funny, I was going to start a thread about this exact topic yesterday, whether or not netbooting 68ks is possible.

I did see on eBay a NuBus card that claimed to be able to do this a while back and googled for references. It seemed to be true, if not a very well-known or popuar product, although there are many possible reasons for that. I didn't buy it, maybe because it was too expensive, maybe because it didn't include the software. I don't remember. I don't remember what it was called or who made it either, but I can't find it again.

The thing is, netbooting a computer means doing some somewhat complicated networking stuff - configuring, then downloading a kernel, then mounting a network file system of some description - before really loading the operating system. So it's not enough to just have a networking interfcae that the OS supports, it's got to have explicit support doing all that in firmware. I don't think an old Mac can do it with a 'standard' NuBus NIC.

 

[gavo]

So is it possible to boot Old World Macs into an OS 7, 8, 9 (most likely the latter) thats installed on a network server?

Wow. This question triggered some long forgotten memories! I used to work in a student computer lab where we wanted to do just this. We had a mix of LCIII's and (new) PowerMac 6100's. We did in fact get this to work using "The Diskless Mac" from Sonic Systems - which was essentially a boot ROM that replaced the onboard ROM on a PDS or NuBUS (was the 6100 NuBus - I cant remember) ethernet card.

Google "The Diskless Mac" with "Sonic Systems" and you'll see how it works. We did this with System 7, but I have to tell you that we abandoned the idea not too far into it - the problem was when you had 40 machines all reboot at the same time - veeeeeeeery slow. A few machines at a time was fine however, so not likely to be a problem if you can find any of this kit

In the end we went with a product called RevRDist. This allowed you to keep your local HD synchronised with a image on the server - much faster user experience, but less secure - it ended up being the right trade of tho.

Cheers,

 

[Unknown_K]

My crazy network experiment is to get a tokenring network setup between some old PCs and some Nubus Macs using Netware 4.11 on an old PC server (which will have TCP/IP via ethernet and a tokenring card).

 

[Dog Cow]

If you want to experience NetBooting on a vintage Apple product, I suggest the Apple IIgs.

 

[Gil]

My crazy network experiment is to get a tokenring network setup between some old PCs and some Nubus Macs using Netware 4.11 on an old PC server (which will have TCP/IP via ethernet and a tokenring card).

Ahh, NetWare 4.11! I dig! I actually have the complete genuine set of NetWare 4.11 and documentation, that I got for free from a friend. Also got GroupWise 5.2 as well.



Token-Ring sounds cool. I've never seen or used it, but i would like to try. Is that the one that uses BNC cables/connectors?

 

[porter]

Token-Ring sounds cool. I've never seen or used it, but i would like to try.

Token ring uses a ring topology between MAUs (Media Access Units) and drop links break into the ring through a relay. They run at 4Mhz or 16Mhz.

It differs from ethernet in a number of ways, the 802 frame is slightly different, it can contain routing information in the header, you don't get collisions and you can tell if a station received the packet as it flips a bit in the packet as it continues round the ring.

Is that the one that uses BNC cables/connectors?

No, that's 10Mhz thin ethernet, aka 10Base-2.

 

[Unknown_K]

My crazy network experiment is to get a tokenring network setup between some old PCs and some Nubus Macs using Netware 4.11 on an old PC server (which will have TCP/IP via ethernet and a tokenring card).

Ahh, NetWare 4.11! I dig! I actually have the complete genuine set of NetWare 4.11 and documentation, that I got for free from a friend. Also got GroupWise 5.2 as well.



Token-Ring sounds cool. I've never seen or used it, but i would like to try. Is that the one that uses BNC cables/connectors?

My IBM PS/2 Tokenring cards are mostly RJ45, the Nubsu Mac ones are DB9 female and I made adapters to ethernet cable for them. The MUI hub is rj45 and will be running 16Mb.

Lucky you have novell 4.11 I am looking for original manuals so I know how to do the bridging between ethernet and tokenring (I want TCP/IP).

 

[Bunsen]

Might it be possible to net boot something like Sys. 7 using an Asante EN/SC adapter?

This $0.02 is mine.

Not as the situation stands, no. The EN/SC devices are recognised through their drivers as NICs, not as local storage, and that only after an OS, and then the drivers, load and run.

Physically it ought to be possible in principle - I would be willing to bet reverse-engineering and rewriting the ROM in the EN/SC itself would be necessary, and possibly writing something special to run at the server end.

In the end it would be simpler to build a SCSI to network device from scratch (hey now .... ) - like a SCSI RAM disk that can locally cache a few-meg-or-less file fetched over Ethernet on request, and then serve it up to the Mac as a properly formatted disk. The homebrew SCSI RAM disk linked elsewhere would be a good start.

That would still only serve to netboot a single Mac, unless the device does some really fancy non-standard SCSI bus arbitration dance. And if you can achieve that, you might as well do away with the Ethernet part and just serve a single ordinary disk to the various Macs via SCSI.

The only other solutions that occur to me involve Nubus/PDS cards with speshul magik (as alluded to above), or re-writing the client machine's ROM.

 

[Bunsen]

some sort of boot floppy

That sounds a little more possible.

Hrm. A script to copy the OS image into a RAM disk and reboot?

Another thought: how much networking is built into the ROM System 6 in the Classic?

 

[Bunsen]

to run diskless.
System 7 won't.

System 6 can run from a floppy

There are bootable floppy images available for Systems 6 - 8

 

[z180]

I think that thinclienting classic :beige: is possible but requires a lot of work.

 

[Dog Cow]

some sort of boot floppy

That sounds a little more possible.

Hrm. A script to copy the OS image into a RAM disk and reboot?

Another thought: how much networking is built into the ROM System 6 in the Classic?

All of it. Everything needed to connect from the localtalk into an AppleShare server. You can even set the ROM disk as a startup disk.

 

[paws]

Another thought: how much networking is built into the ROM System 6 in the Classic?

All of it. Everything needed to connect from the localtalk into an AppleShare server. You can even set the ROM disk as a startup disk.

Ye Gods. Nifty!

 

[Dog Cow]

Another thought: how much networking is built into the ROM System 6 in the Classic?

All of it. Everything needed to connect from the localtalk into an AppleShare server. You can even set the ROM disk as a startup disk.

Ye Gods. Nifty!

I have one. Unfortunately, it's at my parents' house right now.... but I do have first-hand experience. I need to get it back so I can mess around with it once more.