Asante MacCon problem with SE/30

[rickrob]

I finally found an Asante Mac Con for my SE/30-- This one has the Thick/Thin option. 

I've got the board installed and connected to a Farallon Ether 10T Starlet 8 Hub, and I installed the Asante 5.6.0 drivers and MacTCP 1.1.1.  I have a PC connected to the 10-Base-T side of the hub, and the SE/30 is on the thin coax side.

Problem is -- I can't ping the Mac from the PC.

I've static IP's set on both the SE/30 and the PC. Mac is running 7.1 and the PC is XP.  The PC shows a 10MB connection. There's a Red LED on the MacCon that is on solid all the time.

I run the Asante diagnostics and I can see the card. All the tests pass and see packets being received,  although it's not a lot of packets.

I didn't see any extensions installed for the MacCon, I assume the installer modified the System File.

Don't know why this isn't working-- Am I missing something here?

 

[olePigeon]

Ugh.  I've had a lot of issues with ethernet cards and the SE/30.  Even when I had the actual software disk, I couldn't get them to work by just installing the card and drivers.  The only way I could get them to work is to do a clean install of System 7 with ALL the network options selected.

After that, I didn't even need the driver disk that came with the card.  It would work with the Apple software.  Then I'd install MacTCP and it'd work fine.

 

[olePigeon]

Also, do you have a crossover ethernet cable?  Could be a problem with the hub.  Maybe try a 10/100 switch.

 

[rickrob]

Open Transport 1.1.1 solved the problem.  I had a really old version of MacTCP-- It was 1.1.1 I think. 

I couldn't find MacTCP 2.0.6-- maybe that would have worked. 

 

[Charlieman]

Ugh.  I've had a lot of issues with ethernet cards and the SE/30.  Even when I had the actual software disk, I couldn't get them to work by just installing the card and drivers.  The only way I could get them to work is to do a clean install of System 7 with ALL the network options selected.

The Network Software Installer (NSI) disk should fix that more easily. It'll provide the latest versions of Appletalk and EtherTalk (ie LocalTalk and Ethernet drivers), on which to install the vendor driver if it is not present. Always install the vendor driver; the Apple driver is generic and may not enable cache RAM. The NSI supports System 6 to 7.1ish; later versions of System 7 incorporated the NSI.

---

MacTCP is not fully loaded on boot. It is fully loaded after you run a TCP/IP application. 

If you try to ping a freshly booted Mac with MacTCP, it will not respond. If you run Telnet or Netscape, MacTCP will kick in and respond to ping.

Open Transport is fully loaded on boot. 

 

[rickrob]

The Asante drivers were installed and I ran the NSI ZM1.5.1 as well, and I tried running MacTCP Ping on the SE/30.  No luck.  That's when I went to OT.

Problem now is I can't switch back to classic networking to try anything else with MacTCP. The Network Software Selector throws an error and says "The application that created it can't be found"

 

[Charlieman]

Thanks for the feedback, rickrob. You are connecting to a Farallon Starnet hub. Are you connecting to the internet beyond, or are you just using a private network?

As you say, it is too late to experiment much further. The Network Software Selector, as I recall, requires a reboot and is a bit flaky if you update system software after installing Open Transport. Try updating to OT 1.1.2.

 

[rickrob]

Thanks for the feedback, rickrob. You are connecting to a Farallon Starnet hub. Are you connecting to the internet beyond, or are you just using a private network?

As you say, it is too late to experiment much further. The Network Software Selector, as I recall, requires a reboot and is a bit flaky if you update system software after installing Open Transport. Try updating to OT 1.1.2.

I'm on a private network for now, but I can connect to the internet through the hub using the PC.  I'm OK with Open transport-- my Color Classsic is set up the same way. It would have been nice to figure out what the problem was.  I even installed a clean system 7.1 and reinstalled all the drivers, NSI, MacTCP etc... nothing seemed to work.

But it's working with OT, so I'll be happy with that.       I 'll try OT 1.1.2 and see what happens.

Thanks for the help everyone.

 

[olePigeon]

Rickrob, that was my experience with NSI.  It wouldn't work.  I got it to work with MacTCP 2.x after a clean install with network options as I mentioned before.

 

[rickrob]

I got this working with MacTCP 2.1 last night.  I don't know what happened, but when I got home and started the machine up it would not work again-- even with OT 1.1.2

I tried the Asante diags again and they compalined that Appletalk was on ethernet. Told me to go to the Network Control panel and change it. But, the network control panel isn't there because I installed OT... and Appletalk was setup on the printer port in the Appletak CDev. So I tossed out network preferences, zapped the PRAM, rebuilt the desktop and then the Network control panel shows back up, along with MacTCP 1.1.1. :?:   That must have switched it back to classic networking.

I reconfigured everything and fired up MacTCP Ping and everything worked.  Updated MacTCP to 2.1 and all is well.   Ran the OT 1.1.2 installer and removed it.

Had a couple of disk errors that I had to fix with Norton DD. Don't know if that was a contributing factor.  I wonder if it'll work when I get home today... Ha!

 

[rickrob]

And... It stopped working.   :-/   Fired it up last night and nothing.  Same error from the Asante diags.  Broke out the 7.1 CD and did a clean install with network options. Everything worked right away with no other drivers.   Tried it this morning and it's still working. 

 

[68k User]

Hello Everybody, I've an SE/30 with Asante MacCon+ 30iE - thin (BNC  connector) + thick (AUI-DB15 connector) and a CentreCom 210T from AUI to RJ45 adaptor I recently bought.

I tried to connect SE/30 to my MacBook Pro through a USB -> Ethernet adaptor that I successfully use to share internet connection with my Powerbook 5300c, through a PCMCIA 3Com Etherlink.

When I turn on my SE/30, all the lights on the CentreCom adaptor are turned on and green ("SQE TEST", "POLARITY", "POWER"). When I connect it to the Macbook Pro ethernet cable, also the "LINK" light is green.

I configured both MacTPC (under System 7.0 and 7.1) and TCP/IP (under System 7.5.5) as I configured them on my Powerbook 5300c, but when I tried to open a page, Netscape 2 immediately tells me that it can't establish a socket connection (or something like that).

So I tried to install Asante network drivers (both version 5.2.9 and 5.6.1), but software installers tell me that "CANNOT detect any Asante adapter"...

Do you have any advise or tip? I'm not a technician and I'm wondering if it is possible that the Asante MacCon card is broken even if all the lights on the CentreCom adaptor are green... Did you experience the same problem?

Thank you a lot.

 

[68k User]

One minute after I posted the message above, continuing my research on this forum, I found this: 

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/26879-lucky-se30/

BINGO!!! My ethernet card wasn't a MacCon but a Shiva!!! I've never heard it before... I've just installed proper driver and now I'm surfing with my SE/30!! And it is not so bad, considering I have only 8Mb of RAM...

And finally I installed Netpresenz, so I can transfer file from/to my MBP without passing trough my Powerbook 5000 and the very slow AppleTalk...

Great resources 68kmla and it's community!! Thank you all!