Nearly unresponsive system during LocalTalk file transfer?

[avadondragon]

So I noticed recently that my PowerBook G3 running OS9 is brought to its knees during file transfers over PhoneNet for some reason.  Like as in my 8Mhz Mac SE is more responsive while being a file server than my 300Mhz G3.  Any insight into what's going on here or how to improve the situation?

 

[Cory5412]

What OS is on the PowerBook G3 and what PowerBook G3 is it?

The Classic Mac OS has never been very great at file transfers. I see the same on my 840av, where although with System 8 you can move data and continue working on other things, it doesn't work well, to the point that, say, entering text in Claris MacWritePro or Organizer won't keep up with how fast I can type.

My solution to this problem back in the day was always just to have another Mac available I can go use.

If this is a G3 that has serial, I wonder if the machine would fare any better if you switched the G3 side to Ethernet and used a localtalk/ethertalk bridge instead, or if (if you need/want to keep using the G3) you switched the system performing the operation from the G3 to the SE so you can still use the G3 while the SE performs the network tasks.

 

[avadondragon]

It is a Wallstreet/PDQ running OS 9.2.2 and I'm trying to do file transfers over serial.  I finally got a chance to set up my DaynaPort Pocket SCSI Ethernet to test out file transfers between the same PowerBooks using EtherTalk instead (Other machine is a PB170).  The G3 see essentially no performance impact during the significantly faster transfers over Ethernet.  I gather OS9 is much less efficient at serial LocalTalk transfers than OS7.  Can anyone confirm?  Is OS8 any better at it?

 

[Cory5412]

It's my understanding that even 7 and 8 are pretty bad with serial transfers. I was using serial to transfer a bunch of data from my 840 (8.0) to my 1400 (7.6.1) and it was not "good" on either system.

I am told that with 8.1 and better on both sides, it should be a big improvement, but I haven't had the opportunity to do that on my 840 and 1400 yet.

 

[avadondragon]

Serial is unquestionably slow regardless - supposedly 230kbps for LocalTalk transfers.  Whereas with SCSI-to-Ethernet the transfers are much faster.  I need to do some benchmarks to see exactly what kind of transfer speeds I'm seeing.

The thing I am concerned with is what kind of impact the file transfer has on system responsiveness.  Serial transfers on my 300MHz G3 make the computer totally unusable despite how incredibly slow the file transfer is.  Finder itself is nearly unresponsive.

Ethernet transfers on the other hand can take place in the background non-stop and the G3 experiences no noticeable impact to usability.  I fired up a couple pretty resource heavy apps and everything ran smoothly.

Now the flip side of this is that my 8MHz 68000 based Macintosh SE running system 7.1.1 can serve a file transfer over serial LocalTalk AND is still reasonably responsive with negligible impact to system usability.

Serial LocalTalk networking was around since near the very beginning of the Macintosh with it's peak in the System 7 era.  By the time of OS8 Ethernet was standard on every Mac and LocalTalk was being phased out.  By OS9 Apple dropped support for MacIP over LocalTalk even.  I'm wondering if the later implementations of serial networking are actually LESS robust than what was available in the earlier system software from back in LocalTalk's hayday.