So, for example, this cable would work? https://www.ebay.com/itm/2936612111...cxX6sv0C3w%3D%3D|clp:2334524|tkp:BFBM8oDKpstf
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Introducing (and interest check) AirTalk: Wireless plug-and-play LocalTalk dongles
- Thread starter cheesestraws
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If it is a proper one of what it says it is, yes! I don't know who Kentek are. But if that's wired same as the Apple one it's obviously trying to look like, then it'll be fine.
I'm glad you pointed out the need for the cable to be cross-over. All the Apple serial ("printer") cables will be cross-over (and Mac serial cables from other brands). But new generic cables might be made for other applications (audio?) and be straight through. If it's advertised as a serial or cable, it should be cross-over (hopefully the pinout is correct).
The first batch of "production prototypes" are going out to testers this week, as soon as I can bear to wrangle the postal system and/or couriers. There are already some hardware changes I know I want to make:
- A second ADB port, so that passthrough can be a thing. I revisited my old conclusion (thanks to IRC folks poking me) that stackable ones weren't a thing any more, and found that if I looked at other suppliers they are, so I must have been being very lazy that day. (This may vary, though, depending on whether testers find ADB power actually any use or not)
- Mounting holes so it can actually fit in a case.
- A header for a separate LED board so that you can see the LEDs from outside the case.
Ok, so unless you want this elsewhere, I am going to post my testing/findings/questions here:
1. I saw in your instructions that this device can "talk to any other AirTalk dongle on the network." Can they not communicate to the other AppleTalk devices connected via Ethernet, etc, on the same network?
2. ADB power works just fine; my first test is via the second ADB port on my IIfx, solo device. I will attempt to chain it to multiple devices (maybe two keyboards, etc), later on.
3. For some reason, my first test with an AppleTalk ImageWriter II (why not try the most exotic test first???) seems to show that it is very, very, VERY slow - as I write this, five minutes have passed....and I think the ImageWriter has attempted to write one single line of pixels. I am not sure why this would be.
Some clarification: I have one dongle on the IWII via Phone Net and phone wire, powered via USB cable. The other is hooked to my IIfx, powered via the ADB port of the IIfx. The IIfx is hooked to the AirTalk device via the Modem port. I suppose I could rule out issues with the Phone Net boxes by using a regular serial cable. They are connected to my home AirPort wireless network.
- LED 5 blinks red on both devices after the sequence of green LEDs while the devices are transmitting/receiving: is this indicative of some sort of error?
Update: using a serial cable instead of the Phone Net boxes makes no difference.
1. I saw in your instructions that this device can "talk to any other AirTalk dongle on the network." Can they not communicate to the other AppleTalk devices connected via Ethernet, etc, on the same network?
2. ADB power works just fine; my first test is via the second ADB port on my IIfx, solo device. I will attempt to chain it to multiple devices (maybe two keyboards, etc), later on.
3. For some reason, my first test with an AppleTalk ImageWriter II (why not try the most exotic test first???) seems to show that it is very, very, VERY slow - as I write this, five minutes have passed....and I think the ImageWriter has attempted to write one single line of pixels. I am not sure why this would be.
Some clarification: I have one dongle on the IWII via Phone Net and phone wire, powered via USB cable. The other is hooked to my IIfx, powered via the ADB port of the IIfx. The IIfx is hooked to the AirTalk device via the Modem port. I suppose I could rule out issues with the Phone Net boxes by using a regular serial cable. They are connected to my home AirPort wireless network.
- LED 5 blinks red on both devices after the sequence of green LEDs while the devices are transmitting/receiving: is this indicative of some sort of error?
Update: using a serial cable instead of the Phone Net boxes makes no difference.
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A packet trace would be useful. The ImageWriter driver waits for a PAPStatus Ready signal from the printer before sending more data. Since the ImageWriter II has very little buffer space and prints slowly, the driver is constantly querying to see if the printer is ready between sending chunks of data. Given that the AirTalk dongle adds latency, this becomes very noticeable.
BTW: The PAPStatus message with the ImageWriters is not human readable, it is a 2-byte value.
BTW: The PAPStatus message with the ImageWriters is not human readable, it is a 2-byte value.
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This might do the job. I know Apple wrote some packet dumpers, but I can't find them at the moment. Whatever you run, do it on a separate machine if possible. The Macintosh Print Manager has a habit of monopolizing the machine.
Thanks for the initial notes! Popping them in here is great.
Not without a bridge, no. These are like long localtalk wires without the wire. This is for a number of reasons: the two most important being that a lot of end-user WiFi equipment doesn't pass AppleTalk correctly, and it's kind of hard to build LocalTalk to Ethernet gateways that work properly with no configuration when there are lots of them on a network and they may all have multiple machines behind them. My next project after AirTalk aims to address that, but I want to get this one finished first.
Sorry about the crappy and incomprehensible arrangement of the LEDs on the test boards you got. I'm not sure why I thought that was acceptable to send other people. The next round of boards will have them rearranged...
LED5 is a localtalk-side error. You'll see it happen occasionally under normal use, but it shouldn't be doing it after every exchange of packets. Is this on the computer dongle or the printer dongle? Could you upload or send me a video of what the lights look like?
That's concerning. When you get a chance, I'd like to see what performance you get in a sustained large copy operation between two computers...
Hmmm, yes, that would account for it. How much buffer space does the IW actually have? Sorry to betray my ignorance about printers here, but isn't PAP on top of ATP? In which case, that's a double whammy if the buffer is small because the ATP round-trip time will slow everything else down too. But even that shouldn't be 'five minutes for one line' slow. @LaPorta if you can get that AT View software working (another option is NetMinder Localtalk, but I think that only works properly under System 6?) a packet trace would be extremely handy...
Not without a bridge, no. These are like long localtalk wires without the wire. This is for a number of reasons: the two most important being that a lot of end-user WiFi equipment doesn't pass AppleTalk correctly, and it's kind of hard to build LocalTalk to Ethernet gateways that work properly with no configuration when there are lots of them on a network and they may all have multiple machines behind them. My next project after AirTalk aims to address that, but I want to get this one finished first.
Sorry about the crappy and incomprehensible arrangement of the LEDs on the test boards you got. I'm not sure why I thought that was acceptable to send other people. The next round of boards will have them rearranged...
LED5 is a localtalk-side error. You'll see it happen occasionally under normal use, but it shouldn't be doing it after every exchange of packets. Is this on the computer dongle or the printer dongle? Could you upload or send me a video of what the lights look like?
That's concerning. When you get a chance, I'd like to see what performance you get in a sustained large copy operation between two computers...
Hmmm, yes, that would account for it. How much buffer space does the IW actually have? Sorry to betray my ignorance about printers here, but isn't PAP on top of ATP? In which case, that's a double whammy if the buffer is small because the ATP round-trip time will slow everything else down too. But even that shouldn't be 'five minutes for one line' slow. @LaPorta if you can get that AT View software working (another option is NetMinder Localtalk, but I think that only works properly under System 6?) a packet trace would be extremely handy...
Have done 
.
.OK, so looking at that video, @LaPorta, the red frame error lights are on the mac end of the connection, not the printer end (or at least on the dongle at that end). A handful every so often are normal, but that looks excessive. A couple of things:
- Did you try changing the cable at the mac end as well as the printer end? I don't think it's this but we might as well be thorough about this...
- Do you have another Mac handy you can try with instead of the IIfx?
- When you get a chance to do a mac-to-mac test, can you have a look whether the IIfx behaves the same way, with lots of red flashes?
I will cetainly be trying all sorts of combinations; this was only my first attempt. My SE FDHD and Portable will be next in the mix. I will be trying PhoneNet cabling as well as straight serial cables. One thought I had is the IIfx has a special serial port software switch for (?) speed settings, so perhaps it could be a IIfx - specific issue. I will next just give it a go with the SE FDHD, as out of the mix of machines, this is the most "standard", rather than the IIfx or Portable.
The Portable will also be testing the ADB power, as I think it is a lower-amperage rating ADB port. I will also use my PT Pro, which has Geoports, to make sure there is no issue with those. We will see!
The Portable will also be testing the ADB power, as I think it is a lower-amperage rating ADB port. I will also use my PT Pro, which has Geoports, to make sure there is no issue with those. We will see!
thanks for doing all this!
AT View regrettably does not allow any recording, it simply displays what is on the network.
I also did discover so far the first incompatibility: I set my IIfx serial ports to compatible instead of faster, and it worked fine…so as of now, these are incompatible with a IIfx (and presumably, Quadra 950, which I read does the same) with serial ports set to fast mode, at least when printing to an ATIWII.
I also did discover so far the first incompatibility: I set my IIfx serial ports to compatible instead of faster, and it worked fine…so as of now, these are incompatible with a IIfx (and presumably, Quadra 950, which I read does the same) with serial ports set to fast mode, at least when printing to an ATIWII.
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I'll try to reproduce this tomorrow: I haven't actually tried them on the 950 yet. Interested to see what this is
Ok, I did a few copy tests. My SE copies things INCREDIBLY slowly for reasons I do not understand (usually); it may be something with the SCSI2SD in it is not configured properly, or the use of System 7.1...so I kind of bailed on that. Instead, I did some file copy tests between the IIfx and PT Pro. I hit file copy speeds anywhere between 1.5-2.5k/sec (measured via true file size and my stopwatch recording time from file copy box appearance to disappearance). I also started a game of Bolo for a game test....it is marginally playable; has about the latency of a 4+ person internet game of Bolo if spread very far apart. No error lights encountered at all.
Next, I will set the IIfx back to fast serial and see if it encounters any errors when copying files to the PT Pro.
Edit: Confirmed. Setting the IIfx to faster serial setting causes red light activation every string of green lights flashing, and causes incredibly slow connectivity (it took over 5 minutes to even connect to the PT Pro).
Next, I will set the IIfx back to fast serial and see if it encounters any errors when copying files to the PT Pro.
Edit: Confirmed. Setting the IIfx to faster serial setting causes red light activation every string of green lights flashing, and causes incredibly slow connectivity (it took over 5 minutes to even connect to the PT Pro).
So you're seeing fairly miserable speeds across the board then? 
What's the WiFi access point you're using? What are ping latencies like between two computers on it?
What's the WiFi access point you're using? What are ping latencies like between two computers on it?
The ping I can try and discern using my Quicksilver: otherwise, if you have a program you know of I can use to ping on 7.1 or System 6, I will gladly try it. All of my points are AirPort base stations off various flavors all blended together in one network. That might cause the issue, though there is no issue when I use ethernet across them all. I can always try setting up one as a single dedicated network distinct from my others to test them in isolation if that is what you wanted.
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