Wifi Extension Development Thread

[ants]

Small update: I've been teaching myself Apple Events - so that the Wifi menu can send requests to the background application that does all the heavy lifting. Things like connecting to a new network or refreshing the list of networks can now be sent from the menu to the background app.

Unfortunately it seems like I can't change the icon of the top-level menu. It appears this function wasn't made available in the toolbox until Carbon / OS X (the SetMenuTitleIcon function). There might be a way of doing it using some secret Macintosh voodoo, but that's beyond my abilities at the moment. So for now I won't be able to show things like current signal strength.

Commits are on GitHub but still a long way off a stable build.

 

[hfrazier]

@ants

Sorry I've gone MIA! Every weekend for the past few weeks I've had to travel. (And May isn't looking too great in terms of free weekends.)

I'll play around this upconing week with the VM300 and see what I can get. Also, that gl-inet router finally came in. I haven't had a chance to play with it either, but I will.

Edit: also, I was finally able to get a PowerCache card. It should be here next week and I can finally utilize Bolle's ProtoCache adapter!

 

[ants]

Don't sweat it... It's all just a bit of fun. I actually figured out the http commands for connecting last night - was pretty straightforward.

That said, the more is use the VM300 the more I realise how flaky it is. Who would have thought for a $25 device!

I'm keen to hear your experiences with the new device.

 

[hfrazier]

Just powered it up.. this thing is FAST! And it runs OpenWRT, so we know the software is good. 

Advanced settings is a whole different config portal.. with a great warning message. It connected to my wifi in seconds and I'm posting this now via its connection.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Dunno, clueless, but found smne info thanks to links in the PSU thread  .  .  .

http://bylenga.ddns.net/index.php?page=68KSSH.php

http://bylenga.ddns.net/index.php?page=68KNAS.php

.  .  .  probably not applicable, but what the heck?

 

[ants]

Thanks for sharing @Trash80toHP_Mini, it's amazing what people are still able to achieve with an ancient computer.

 

[hfrazier]

@Trash80toHP_Mini Woah, the second link.. I will have to try that with my NAS.. Usually I just use Transmit to FTP the files on my SE/30!

 

[nickpunt]

There's also the Cloud 7 control panel from bbraun that lets you mount an HTTP disk. For future-proofing, HTTP web hosting is probably better than AFP-based NAS sharing, since Apple has stopped working on AFP and it's being deprecated in favor of SMB. Thus I'm not sure how much longer NAS drives will support AFP.

I haven't tried Cloud 7 yet but it looks very useful, only concern I have is on the web server side how to host these old Mac files with resource forks. It also leaves open the possibility of having a shared address where we can all access common software, rather than each of us roll our own solution.

http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/68khttpdisk.html

A nice user experience idea might be to combine this with the wifi extension to attempt to automatically mount a drive upon wifi connection. That'd be neat  

 

[ants]

The issue with Cloud 7 is that it's HTTP only (no SSL) - over the web your data would be unencrypted. Although perhaps there might be a way of setting up a https proxy on your network...

 

[nglevin]

Dunno, clueless, but found smne info thanks to links in the PSU thread  .  .  .

http://bylenga.ddns.net/index.php?page=68KSSH.php

http://bylenga.ddns.net/index.php?page=68KNAS.php

.  .  .  probably not applicable, but what the heck?

I wish that author put last updated links on these pages. The second link, especially, reminds me of how easy it was to network with beige Macs from pre-Snow Leopard(?) Mac OS X.

My suspicion is that the NAS might be running an older version of Netatalk, back when they supported the older version of AFP that made it possible to connect with a 68k Mac. Not sure if that applies to newer drives from WD.

EDIT: Yeah, this compatibility table from mac68k.info illustrates what I've experienced back then. Though they claim 10.6 is "compatible" as an AppleShare AFP host if you copy 10.5's AFS command line app. Which is risky.

 

[techknight]

The issue with Cloud 7 is that it's HTTP only (no SSL) - over the web your data would be unencrypted. Although perhaps there might be a way of setting up a https proxy on your network...

That doesnt matter if your running a LAMP stack on a Pi or something. Cool thing is, there is a single board computer manufacturer that makes ODROID. there are ODROIDs that are linux machines that are designed to plug into SATA HDDs. These would make a perfect NAS setup. and then you could run Apache and from that point, it doesnt matter if its SSL or not. 

And even MacIPcfg could run on it potentially. 

 

[ants]

Update: The wifi extension is now feature complete. It's running well under emulation, but on my real SE/30 it's got a few issues that I'm working through.

Hopefully I'll have a first release in the next few weeks, time permitting...

 

[bibilit]

This a great 

 

[olePigeon]

Ooo, can't wait.  I'll buy a wireless doohicky and give it a go when you're ready.

 

[CC_333]

I'll buy a wireless doohicky and give it a go when you're ready.

As will I!

c

 

[ants]

It’s with great relief I can say that the first release of the MacWifi Extension is available. You can download it here:

https://github.com/antscode/MacWifi/releases

In the interest of getting something out the door, the extension has been stripped back to basics. You can view available networks, and connect to a WPA2, WPA or Public network. I had issues with stability when using icons in the menu (such as signal strength), so for now they have been removed.

So far, I’ve tested it on my SE/30 - but I’d love to hear if anybody else has some success. There’s a few issues and limitations to note:

• Ensure your Vonets card is successfully connected to your Mac before installing the extension (i.e. correct Duplex settings on the VM300, and that the TCP/IP control panel on your Mac is showing an IP address). If there is not a successful connection, your Mac may hang for about 30 seconds during startup – this appears to be an Open Transport and/or ethernet card issue.
   
  
• Switching networks takes about 2 minutes - this is because the Vonets card requires a reboot. Also, after switching wifi networks you’ll be asked to reboot your Mac. This is to deal with Open Transport, which appears unable to get a new DHCP lease unless you restart. If anyone knows how to resolve this without a reboot, please let me know!
  

 

[olePigeon]

OK, I ordered a Vonets.  It'll be here in 2 to 6 weeks.  Shipping from China is cheap, but not fast.

 

[techknight]

Tell me about it. Imagine ordering LED video displays from china. thats an 8+ week turnaround on shipping...

 

[bibilit]

Vonets has another product (VAR11N-30) basically the same item, but this time you have a casing around, no antenna needed and a reset switch on one side.

Tested this afternoon, working.

This unit is a bit cheaper also and be carried around for a Powerbook for instance.

 

[ants]

Cool, I wonder if it's the same firmware? You could try the wifi extension and see if it works. I haven't compiled a PPC version yet though - do 68k extensions work on a PowerPC?