WiFi for compacts??

[tomlee59]

I have yet to confirm this, but "generally reliable sources" inform me that there is a company that is working on a WiFi module with an RS-232 interface for industrial applications. If this is true, then there might actually be a way to connect our compacts (and other vintage Macs) to the 'net wirelessly (given some software help). Samples are tentatively to be available Q1 of next year.

A wireless Plus...think about it!

 

[beachycove]

Is it April 1 where you are living?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Is it April 1 where you are living?

You won't find a more skeptical (of vaporware & silly notions), truly helpful or anywhere near as knowledgeable a comrade in the entire MLA as the one you just took a shot at.

If TL59 says something may be in development, he's being dead serious, and has the connections to know about such things.

An RS-232 wireless connection for industrial use makes good sense and it'd be something to take a serious look at when, and if, it ships.

 

[wthww]

I think at this point in time the best you are going to get is one of the many ethernet > wifi bridges. You'd need to configure it on a PC, but after that it should work nicely, provided you have an ethernet adapter.

 

[macgreg]

RS-232 to wireless ethernet would be cool. I have a suspicion that the chip controlling it would be more powerful than the Mac using it though

Using one with a PowerBook 100 would be awesome...

 

[Mars478]

Huh?

 

[beachycove]

Is it April 1 where you are living?

the one you just took a shot at.

Disclaimer: Absolutely no shots were taken in the making of the previous post. Any reader error which elicits such a conclusion (that a shot was taken) is not the responsibility of the author. The post was intended purely for the entertainment of the 68kMLA Readership, as a humourous circumlocution for, "You've got to be kidding, this is too good to be true, it must be April 1!" The author will not be held liable for other readings — ergo, if it goes another way it's the reader's own problem (*Jacques Derrida et al., 1001 Books in Contemporary French Philosophy, everywhere in them ad nauseum). The author also knows (as well as a complete stranger might) roughly who TL is, and as TL has helped him out on many an occasion, and as he wants such help to continue well into the future, the author has absolutely no intention of alienating TL. The author likes knowledgeable tech types willing to share bits of wisdom now and again. Oh yes he does.

 

[ChristTrekker]

OK, yeah, that would be pretty cool...but what kind of throughput are you going to get on the RS232 port???

 

[Osgeld]

more than enough for your mac plus

 

[Gorgonops]

For the record, these things already exist. Here's an example of one. Similar devices exist for Ethernet as well.

To clarify matters a little bit, these are not general purpose "network cards". They're essentially a modem of sorts designed to tunnel RS-232 over TCP or UDP to another computer. For instance, you could use one wired up to an old dumb terminal to connect to port 23 (telnet) on a UNIX server as if you'd dialed into it over a phone line. (The "dialing" process would involve sending whatever escape sequences the thing uses to bring up its connection menu, using that to open the telnet port, and then dropping back out into data transmission mode.) Another (more typical) application is allowing the use a device like a serial barcode reader remotely from a server without having to run special wiring.

It would in principle be possible to use one of these to network an old Mac... the simplest way would be to set up a UNIX-y server that would accept a tcp connection from the device and offer a script which would start a PPP or SLIP session. Then on the ancient Mac you'd use an appropriate PPP client to "dial" into the server and go. But the thing to remember here is the device will *not* just act as some sort of magical network bridge. (For instance, you won't be able to browse Appletalk shares by sticking this on your Mac and joining it to your Airport.)

 

[tomlee59]

Is it April 1 where you are living?

the one you just took a shot at.

Disclaimer: Absolutely no shots were taken in the making of the previous post. Any reader error which elicits such a conclusion (that a shot was taken) is not the responsibility of the author. The post was intended purely for the entertainment...

You worry too much, my friend! Rest assured, I took your comment in the spirit it was intended.

I am hoping to get my hands on a sample as soon as one becomes available. No firm pricing information yet, but I've been told that it would be "very low." I pressed him a bit, and asked him if "low" meant "low compared to other such modules" or "low enough for the weekend experimenter to buy one without incurring the wrath of his spouse." Happily the answer was the latter.

Tentative specs: 802.11b only, and not the full rate set (2Mb/s maximum). That fits well with what a Plus is capable of. The limitations help account for its cheapness, no doubt.

I'll keep you posted.

And as to whether or how one might surf the web with this thing, that's where the software plea comes into play. "Some assembly required" is all I can say at this point.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Is it April 1 where you are living?

the one you just took a shot at.

Disclaimer: Absolutely no shots were taken in the making of the previous post. Any reader error which elicits such a conclusion (that a shot was taken) is not the responsibility of the author. The post was intended purely for the entertainment of the 68kMLA

the author has absolutely no intention of alienating TL. The author likes knowledgeable tech types willing to share bits of wisdom now and again. Oh yes he does.

:lol: Nice post, very entertaining, well done! [] ]'>

 

[Unknown_K]

I would think industrial machines had RS-422 so you can hook up quite a few devices to one line (each having its own ID).

Anyway can't you just send data over the serial port on a compact anyway (not like serial to wireless speeds anything up).

 

[Bunsen]

The WiFly GSX module incorporates a 2.4GHz radio, processor, TCP/IP stack / preloaded with software to simplify integration and minimizes development of your application. In the simplest configuration the hardware only requires four connections (PWR, TX, RX, GND) /
Features: {edited}

* Host Data Rate Up to / 2.7 Mbps for UART

* / TCP/IP and WPA2

* Supports Adhoc connection

* Configuration over UART or wireless interfaces using simple ASCII commands

* Secure WiFi authentication WEP-128, WPA-PSK (TKIP), WPA2-PSK, EAP-TLS for WPA1 & WPA2 Enterprise

* Built in networking applications DHCP, UDP, DNS, ARP, ICMP

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9290

And it's hardly the only one out there. Whether $70-90 is within hobbyist range is up to you.

 

[Gorgonops]

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9290
And it's hardly the only one out there. Whether $70-90 is within hobbyist range is up to you.

Yes. The link I pointed to earlier was to a "complete" standalone unit incorporating one, but the same outfit also sells at least two kinds of the bare modules.

As I noted, without some serious software development the most straightforward way to use one of these things is as a "modem" to connect you to a PPP server. Doing it that way the speed limit will be whatever you can usefully get out of a compact Mac. 115200 bps or less, I assume. Setting up the PPP server is "child's play" and an unmodified PPP dialer would serve on the Mac side.

If you wanted more than that, depending on the capabilities of the micro controller in the module I suppose it might be possible (long shot) to set up the module to act as an Appletalk bridge by writing a custom firmware for it. This absolutely would *not* be an easy task. (You'd essentially have to port something like NetaTalk to handle the 802.11b/g side, and write a serial port driver for the serial side that would emulate an Localtalk node. Considering the CPU is probably going to be something like a Rabbit, PIC, or eZ80 with a few kilobytes of RAM and 32k-128k of Flash it's going to be really tight.)

 

[tomlee59]

Thanks, Gorgonops, for those great ideas. Software and I parted company when the goto statement was outlawed (a legal condition of getting my graduate degree was that I not write code), but would it be correct to say that the easiest thing might be to use WiFi ad hoc mode to communicate with, say, a PC set up as a PPP server? I'm trying to imagine how to cobble something together without requiring (much) software creation.

 

[Gorgonops]

Thanks, Gorgonops, for those great ideas. Software and I parted company when the goto statement was outlawed (a legal condition of getting my graduate degree was that I not write code), but would it be correct to say that the easiest thing might be to use WiFi ad hoc mode to communicate with, say, a PC set up as a PPP server? I'm trying to imagine how to cobble something together without requiring (much) software creation.

I'd think infrastructure mode would be easier than ad-hoc, if you already have a working WiFi network that the module's firmware supports connecting to. (The module should be "smart" enough to get on the network by itself once configured. Most of the ones out there seem to even support DHCP. You'll be hitting the PPP server via its IP address so you shouldn't need a dedicated ad-hoc segment between it and the device.)

As for the server, it should be roughly equally easy/hard to do it with just about any UNIX-like OS. (I've used pppd as a VPN server tunneled over ssh on Linux, FreeBSD, and MacOS X, and that's *basically* what you'd be doing.) A really bare-bones module *may* not support creating an outgoing connection (which would be the case if it's designed to network a serial peripheral). In that case you'd have to open the tcp stream from the server end. Otherwise... again, depending on the module you could either simply enable "telnet" on the host machine and stream PPP over port 23, or you could pick an arbitrary tcp port and script a simple "PPP connection server" to run out of inetd that would listen to connections from it. Once the tcp connection is established you'd run whatever PPP dialer/stack that tickles your fancy on the Mac end (I've never used a classic mac over dialup so no recommendations here), and have a container script on the other end run "pppd" with the appropriate flags to assign an IP address and get the Mac routeable.

(If I had one of the doohickies and an old Mac I could write up the exact procedure and write a script, but as every doohickey is going to be different the devil is in the details. But any semi-decent UNIX nerd should be able to get you going.)

 

[Bunsen]

I suppose it might be possible (long shot) to set up the module to act as an Appletalk bridge by writing a custom firmware for it. / port something like NetaTalk / emulate an Localtalk node. Considering the CPU is probably going to be something like a Rabbit, PIC, or eZ80 with a few kilobytes of RAM and 32k-128k of Flash it's going to be really tight.)

WiFly:

* 32 bit CPU, 128kB RAM, 2MB ROM, 1MB (8Mb) Flash, firmware upload by FTP over WiFi or UART.

* ECOS OS, TCP/IP, WPA2, DHCP, UDP, DNS, ARP, ICMP

Further thoughts: if you leave aside Appletalk access, and wish to connect the client to the net via any random WiFi network, could you skip the Netatalk part and have the module emulate a standard modem, and the "dial-in" server? FTP could be used for Mac-to-Mac transfers. I don't understand all the TLAs included in the WiFly software stack, but is it any of it helpful?

eCos (embedded configurable operating system) is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system intended for embedded systems / It is designed to be customizable to precise application requirements / It is programmed in the C programming language, and has compatibility layers and APIs for POSIX and µITRON.

March 30, 2009 eCos 3.0 final release
/ incorporates many recent contributions to the public eCos project including:

/snip/

* PPP, SNTP client, VNC server, and enhanced HTTP server for FreeBSD TCP/IP stack

I note, with slightly off-topic interest, that eCos also runs on M68k/Coldfire and PPC }

 

[Gorgonops]

I suppose it might be possible (long shot) to set up the module to act as an Appletalk bridge by writing a custom firmware for it. / port something like NetaTalk / emulate an Localtalk node. Considering the CPU is probably going to be something like a Rabbit, PIC, or eZ80 with a few kilobytes of RAM and 32k-128k of Flash it's going to be really tight.)

WiFly:

* 32 bit CPU, 128kB RAM, 2MB ROM, 1MB (8Mb) Flash, firmware upload by FTP over WiFi or UART.

* ECOS OS, TCP/IP, WPA2, DHCP, UDP, DNS, ARP, ICMP

Further thoughts: if you leave aside Appletalk access, and wish to connect the client to the net via any random WiFi network, could you skip the Netatalk part and have the module emulate a standard modem, and the "dial-in" server? FTP could be used for Mac-to-Mac transfers. I don't understand all the TLAs included in the WiFly software stack, but is it any of it helpful?

Wow. The CPUs in the WiFi devices are a lot more powerful then the ones in the Ethernet ones I've seen...

With that much power/space it probably would be doable to run a PPP or SLIP daemon on the serial side and bridge/NAT out the network side. eCos' TCP/IP stack is apparently lifted straight out of FreeBSD and includes PPP. It the WiFly comes with sufficient source and documentation to spin your own firmware it'd be a reasonable possibility. It's still an order of magnitude more involved then using it as a "dumb modem" with a stock firmware, but not completely pie-in-the-sky.