Asante MacCon SE Troubleshooting

[LaPorta]

Well, now that I have all the kinks worked out of my SE itself, I am trying to get the network card to work correctly. I have it connected via a normal Cat5 cable to my AirPort router. My iMac G4 and PowerTower Pro work fine with the AirPort. I have installed the Asante software, and EtherTalk shows up as "Alternate Ethernet in the Network control panel under System 7.1. I can select it, no issue. I have run Asante Troubleshooting, and the hardware tests verify that the card is working. The orange status light is constantly lit up on the daughter card, and the green access light blinks constantly. I have selected TPL to enable Linking via 10Base-T mode. The green connection status light on the AirPort ethernet jack does NOT light up, indicating no active connection. I have a feeling that there is some hardware incompatibility with the AirPort being so new. I really don't have much experience working out the intricacies of these networking issues so I could really use some guidance here.

 

[davidg5678]

I think this is likely an ethernet auto-negotiation problem. The ethernet card needs to tell the AirPort that it works at 10Mbps for a link to be established, but its implementation of ethernet might be slightly off, so it doesn't communicate its speed. What worked for me was to buy a cheap vintage ethernet switch that works at 10Mbps and use it between the Mac and router. The switch is able to set the correct mode on the router and allows a connection to be established with the ethernet card. These are very cheap and do the job well.

I bought something like this a couple months ago to solve my issues: https://www.ebay.com/itm/3Com-OfficeConnect-3C16701A-Ethernet-Hub-1670-110-050-2-01/202612045882?epid=1658186069&hash=item2f2c9e783a:g:mUMAAOSwf69ceYZA:sc:UPSGround!17033!US!-1

(it also works with Thinnet ethernet, if you are into that )

 

[LaPorta]

So basically get an old, ghetto hub . I think I've got one around somewhere.

 

[Byte Knight]

Well, now that I have all the kinks worked out of my SE itself, I am trying to get the network card to work correctly. I have it connected via a normal Cat5 cable to my AirPort router. My iMac G4 and PowerTower Pro work fine with the AirPort. I have installed the Asante software, and EtherTalk shows up as "Alternate Ethernet in the Network control panel under System 7.1. I can select it, no issue. I have run Asante Troubleshooting, and the hardware tests verify that the card is working. The orange status light is constantly lit up on the daughter card, and the green access light blinks constantly. I have selected TPL to enable Linking via 10Base-T mode. The green connection status light on the AirPort ethernet jack does NOT light up, indicating no active connection. I have a feeling that there is some hardware incompatibility with the AirPort being so new. I really don't have much experience working out the intricacies of these networking issues so I could really use some guidance here.

If the Ethernet card has a AUI port, you can use a Cisco / Centrecom 2500 transeiver or something similar to hook it up to your Airport.  That's what I did with my SE/30 when the standard Ethernet port didn't work with my Airport...

 

[LaPorta]

That has something extra in it to make it work?

 

[cheesestraws]

That has something extra in it to make it work?

The problem is in the electronics that manages the physical link.  If you stick an AUI transceiver in it, you're effectively replacing that bit of electronics with whatever's in the AUI transceiver, which may well behave better.

 

[LaPorta]

Yes I have no experience with sn AUI transceiver, what do they do? Never seen one. Hopefully I can easily pick one up...

 

[cheesestraws]

Yes I have no experience with sn AUI transceiver, what do they do? Never seen one. Hopefully I can easily pick one up...

AUI is like AAUI but with a different connector.  It's what people put on Ethernet cards when there were several competing wiring/electrical standards (10Base2/5/10, etc), and it lets you plug different adapters in to do the actually physical bit of the link. For example, I have a couple of network cards that have a 10Base2 connection for people using that and an AUI connector, for everything else.

 

[LaPorta]

Thanks for that. Then again, I don't want to buy the wrong thing to only not have it work again. Any examples of what would make this work correctly?

 

[cheesestraws]

Does your MacCon card have a 15-pin D type on the back of it, next to the RJ45?

 

[LaPorta]

Yeah it sure does, it definitely has the connector for these things.

 

[cheesestraws]

I haven't done this, so I'd suggest following @Byte Knight's advice as to precisely what to get:

you can use a Cisco / Centrecom 2500 transeiver

If you just whack in "Cisco CentreCom 2500 AUI transceiver" into eBay you'll find a lot of them all of which look basically the same.  In fact, this is the same one that I have here .

 

[LaPorta]

I will look into getting one. I actually found an easier solution just now: It works just fine with the second generation AirPort Express. Apparently it is compatible with the older hardware. I will look into getting another one of those (they are handy, I use this one so when I get a new machine, I can just set the Express up, plug the machine in, and bingo: connected to the rest of my network no matter where I set the machine up).

 

[LaPorta]

I now have a more interesting question.

The SE FDHD ethernet card works with the AirPort Express base station inasmuch as it can connect to my other machines on the same network. The issue I am having now is that it cannot seem to connect to the VirtualBox AppleShare server that I have running. The SE can see my PT Pro on the same network (this is a bunch of Airport base stations linked together). However, the AppleShare server will not appear in the Chooser. The SE FDHD and AppleShare server will show up in the PT Pro's Chooser. I am uncertain as to why one would be seen and not the other. I know that the A2Server will work with the SE because when I had the SE connected to the other base station that the PT Pro is on via PhoneNet to AirPrint adapter to ethernet, the AppleShare server was seen and connected to without issue. Why might it not be seen now?

 

[cheesestraws]

This question gave me a headache so I'm going to come back to it after another coffee .

Questions: is the linkup between the Airports wired or wireless? AppleTalk over wireless can be a little... questionable, even over Apple's own stuff.

What happens if you plug the PT Pro into the same Airport Extreme thingy as the SE?

 

[LaPorta]

Wireless. I thought perhaps that might be the issue, and that I might try and directly connect the AirPorts with a crossover cable or something. I will try plugging the PT Pro in there to troubleshoot. Sorry to make you do mental calisthenics

 

[cheesestraws]

Yeah, try doing it with a wire, and try plugging them into the same AirPort.  AppleTalk over wireless is known to be... hairy, for various reasons.

 

[LaPorta]

Alright, so I got home. The PT Pro does see the AppleShare volume when hooked up to the AirPort Express. Let me also try with the AirPrint over standard Printer Port to verify that works as well. I'll make a list here of what works/doesn't so as not to confuse the heck out of you.

 

[LaPorta]

The plot thickens...

So, I also tried getting the updated AppleTalk version 58.whatever installed. Installed it on both my System 7.1 and 6.0.8 installations on the SE. That solved my problem with being unable to switch the network to Ethernet on 6.0.8. So I tried again under 7.1: the virtual box share does not show under Chooser. Then I try under 6.0.8 - it DOES show up and I can easily connect to and copy to it. So, all this must be some sort of software issue rather than any hardware related issue. But...why would it show under System 6 and not 7?