Link Mac SE with MacMini via AppleTalk?

[traildog64]

Greetings. I'm just starting to learn about classic macs, so bear with me. I have a Mac SE with SuperDrive, a PowerBook G3 Lombard with USB, and a modern MacMini. I'd like to download files from the internet on my MacMini (running High Sierra) to my Mac SE. I get that my Mini can't write in the HFS format. What if I use my G3 as a bridge? Could I transfer images from my Mini to my G3 (Mac OS 9.0), to my SE (System 6.08) via AppleTalk? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[PotatoFi]

A Macintosh SE SuperDrive (I have a Macintosh SE FDHD, which I believe is identical just with a different name) is a GREAT compact Macintosh to start on! That 1.44mb floppy drive will be a HUGE help. Getting files to and from the Macintosh SE is still a bit of a challenge, despite the helpful SuperDrive.

From your modern Mac Mini, there's basically one way to write files to floppy disks: images with "dd". Here's the list of commands that you'll run to write both .img and .dsk files to a floppy disk. First, see what disks are available:

diskutil list


Once you've identified which disk is your floppy, unmount it (where your floppy drive is /dev/disk2:

diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk2


Now, DD the .img or .dsk to the floppy disk:

sudo dd if=the_disk_image.dsk of=/dev/disk2 bs=84 skip=1


If that doesn't seem to work, do it again without the "skip" option (and if someone can tell me why that would be awesome):

sudo dd if=the_disk_image.dsk of=/dev/disk2 bs=84


Now not everything you need to use will come as a .dsk or .img. You will see a lot of .sit files, and in that case, I would download them to the G3 and unpack them directly to an HFS floppy disk with StuffIt Expander. That should preserve resource forks and stuff for when you shove the disk into your Macintosh SE. 

...or, maybe you knew all of that and that does not help at all. I hope it does. As for AppleTalk, I'm REALLY curious to see what people say about it. Hopeful that file transfer is possible with it.

 

[nglevin]

"The Definitive Guide to Connecting Your SE/30" covers all of this extremely thoroughly. We have a sticked topic for it up above the Compact Mac forum.

http://www.applefool.com/se30/

Check "Apple Filing Protocol Ethernet Networks" to start, because it's AFP that won't fool with your resource forks and plays nice with Macs. AppleShare 2.0.1 also has its own section under "More Info" for System 6 users that want to have their System 6 machines act as hosts for file sharing.

System 7 comes with some simple capabilities for lightweight file sharing and hosting without installing extra software, which is also covered in the guide above under MacTCP (before 7.5.3) and OpenTransport (post 7.5.3) within the "System 6 through Mac OS 9.2.2 Setup" section of AFP Ethernet Networks.

 

[Dog Cow]

 Could I transfer images from my Mini to my G3 (Mac OS 9.0), to my SE (System 6.08) via AppleTalk? Any advice would be appreciated.

Yes. I don't believe that your Mac SE would be able to mount an AppleShare volume hosted on the Mac mini, but you should be able to go from the Power Mac G3 to the Mac SE with no problem.

 

[traildog64]

Hi PotatoFi,

I am not experienced in using Terminal in Mac OS, but I typed in exactly what you said. I downloaded a file image from Macintosh Repository. The name of the file is "BattleChess_1_0_2.dsk"; it's located in my Downloads folder. Every time I attempt it, it says the file can't be found.  I have the USB floppy plugged into my MacMini. 

Thanks.

 

[PotatoFi]

Probably beyond the scope of what I can mash I on my phone, but look up how to list (ls) and change directory (cd). You probably just need to run "cd Downloads" to change to the Downloads directory, and then run "ls" to list the contents of the current directory. It seems cryptic at first but it's very easy with a tiny bit of practice.

 

[SE30_Neal]

Yes. I don't believe that your Mac SE would be able to mount an AppleShare volume hosted on the Mac mini, but you should be able to go from the Power Mac G3 to the Mac SE with no problem.

Hi Dog Cow,

is there any info on how you use file sharing on old macintoshs? As I’m wanting to share my se/30 with my PowerPc and g3 iMac which i have networked.

neal

 

[mactjaap]

Try a MacIP ( www.macip.net ) solution in your network. Lots of file sharing possible. 

 

[Dog Cow]

Hi Dog Cow,

is there any info on how you use file sharing on old macintoshs? As I’m wanting to share my se/30 with my PowerPc and g3 iMac which i have networked.

The instructions on this page for Classic Mac Networking are extremely long and comprehensive, and it's worth reading. I also have a couple of Mac books from the mid-1990s, like Macintosh Secrets, which have networking chapters.

If you enable File Sharing on your iMac G3, your Mac SE/30 should have no trouble connecting to it. But you will need an Ethernet card in your SE/30, or you will need another Macintosh, such as a Macintosh LC (this is what I used) or a Macintosh Quadra, which has both LocalTalk and Ethernet ports. This Macintosh will run LocalTalk bridge, and it connects your Mac SE/30 to the iMac G3, from LocalTalk to EtherTalk.

Regarding the original poster's configuration:

As the Mac mini is running OS X High Sierra, that's trickier, as that version of OS X does not have Apple Filing Protocol, so you can't easily use AppleShare between it and your Power Mac G3. Netatalk will add AppleShare back to the Mac mini so you can host an AppleShare server on your Mac mini and mount it on the G3.

With the afore-mentioned Macintosh running LocalTalk bridge, you may be able to get the AppleShare volume on the Mac mini to appear in the Chooser on the Mac SE/30.

 

[SE30_Neal]

The instructions on this page for Classic Mac Networking are extremely long and comprehensive, and it's worth reading. I also have a couple of Mac books from the mid-1990s, like Macintosh Secrets, which have networking chapters.

If you enable File Sharing on your iMac G3, your Mac SE/30 should have no trouble connecting to it. But you will need an Ethernet card in your SE/30, or you will need another Macintosh, such as a Macintosh LC (this is what I used) or a Macintosh Quadra, which has both LocalTalk and Ethernet ports. This Macintosh will run LocalTalk bridge, and it connects your Mac SE/30 to the iMac G3, from LocalTalk to EtherTalk.

Regarding the original poster's configuration:

As the Mac mini is running OS X High Sierra, that's trickier, as that version of OS X does not have Apple Filing Protocol, so you can't easily use AppleShare between it and your Power Mac G3. Netatalk will add AppleShare back to the Mac mini so you can host an AppleShare server on your Mac mini and mount it on the G3.

With the afore-mentioned Macintosh running LocalTalk bridge, you may be able to get the AppleShare volume on the Mac mini to appear in the Chooser on the Mac SE/30.

Hi Dog Cow,

sorry to hoodwink this tread, yes i have networked and internet ready se/30, PowerPc and iMac on my home network all with sharing on and still can’t get them to see each other. That said ive never networked old macs so its probably me doing something stupid in my nievity? Any ideas.

neal 

 

[Mac128]

I’ll just throw my two cents in here. The instructions here are a bit outdated, but they work well.

http://mac128.com/

 

[pcamen]

As the Mac mini is running OS X High Sierra, that's trickier, as that version of OS X does not have Apple Filing Protocol, so you can't easily use AppleShare between it and your Power Mac G3. Netatalk will add AppleShare back to the Mac mini so you can host an AppleShare server on your Mac mini and mount it on the G3. 

Interestingly enough, macOS / OS X doesn't appear to be one of the readily supported platforms for Netatalk.  I've been unable to find some pre-compiled binaries for the Mac.  The manual does elude to the fact that OS X is considered, but doesn't include specific build switches for that target platform. 

@Dog Cow do you have some homegrown instructions on how you got this to work?  I'd love to be able to go directly from the nice little 540c on my desk with networking / TCP/IP all set up, to my Sierra or Mojave machine. 

 

[pcamen]

I tried building it on Mojave, with no luck.  I installed a couple of dependencies via homebrew (libgcrypt, berkeley-db) ran ./configure with no arguments, and ran make.  It dies pretty early on with some bad errors:

  CC       libacl_la-unix.lo
unix.c:340:22: error: use of undeclared identifier 'ACL_GROUP_OBJ'
                case ACL_GROUP_OBJ:
                     ^

I don't think this package is meant to build on the Mac anymore.

My concern running it on Ubuntu (which I could easily do via a VM) is that I would be involving a platform that knows nothing about resource forks, potentially damaging the files.  This would be such an elegant solution to network early Macs that aren't AFP aware. 

I suppose I could also use an intermediate machine like my Lombard running 10.4.11, but I'd really rather not have to do two hops to everywhere. 

 

[pcamen]

Sorry to hijack this thread with a one-man ramble ... but, after poking around with the Appleshare possibilities, I think a better solution might be the SCSI2SD v6, as it allows access to the file system via the USB interface, and can easily be uses as an external SCSI drive for any generation mac if I'm not mistaken. 

The only downside I've come across so far is the USB transfer speed, at 1.2MB/s.  That's just over 4GB/hour or 100GB/day; pretty slow.  But I suspect this will be the occasional copying to a device to set it up as the "master" device that has all possible software on it. 

 

[Dog Cow]

@Dog Cow do you have some homegrown instructions on how you got this to work? 

No, because I've never used netatalk.

 

[SE30_Neal]

Greetings. I'm just starting to learn about classic macs, so bear with me. I have a Mac SE with SuperDrive, a PowerBook G3 Lombard with USB, and a modern MacMini. I'd like to download files from the internet on my MacMini (running High Sierra) to my Mac SE. I get that my Mini can't write in the HFS format. What if I use my G3 as a bridge? Could I transfer images from my Mini to my G3 (Mac OS 9.0), to my SE (System 6.08) via AppleTalk? Any advice would be appreciated.

All i can tell you traildog is that I'd been trying to do something similar for a few years now unsuccessfully and even moving to networking via network card i haven’t really managed it. Even getting my imac g3 running 10.3.9 to share with my SE/30 on 7.5.5 Didn’t work let alone my mac mini. I have however i managed to get around it by using a cheap PowerPc 6200 in between the the imac and se/30. That said don’t let me put you off though several people have managed amazing things with less than i have. 

 

[nglevin]

... but, after poking around with the Appleshare possibilities, I think a better solution might be the SCSI2SD v6, as it allows access to the file system via the USB interface, and can easily be uses as an external SCSI drive for any generation mac if I'm not mistaken.

This really isn't a bad way to go, at all.

My really old Macs all still revolve around Compact Flash cards, which is simply because at the time I was collecting them, the SCSI2SD was either not well known or in production yet, and Compact Flash to SCSI adapters were reasonably well available while the CF-to-Ultra ATA and CF-to-IDE solutions were as cheap as a few dollars at the local Fry's Electronics.

One can't really go wrong with some CF or SD card based solution in a modular Mac. They're great for easy backups and physically exchanging data between computers through "sneakernet".

For the Macs that are harder to take apart, a good fallback is to use one of those SD or CF adapters acting as the "hard disk" in an external SCSI enclosure. Although if the used market hasn't changed since I was last looking, the SD/CF adapter seems to cost more than a SCSI enclosure itself, and at some point the expense comes between that as a possible purchase versus a slower but more versatile Floppy Emu. Both have their advantages.