Phone Talk Networking

[sircabulon]

I have recently setup all my old macs in my office at work and the tried and true way of moving files via floppy is not working due to some of the drives being 4 decades old and needing maintenance. I connected my IIci and Color Classic with a printer cable and was moving files and dug through my old stuff to get phone net adapters out.

I hooked them up this morning, but can't seem to get them working. I do have two power-user brand and two farrallon brand, so I am wondering if that is an issue.

The Color Classic has a terminator and a phone line going to it.
The SE has two phone lines going to it.
The IIci has a Phone line and a terminator going to it.

The IIci is the file server.

I have tried googling, but all I am getting is appletalk over IP which I don't care about. This is strictly a localtalk network.


At this point I am trying to determine if this is a case of user error or if I have to rule out hardware in some way.

Any advice is appreciated!

 

[finkmac]

what specifically isn't working?

what are you googling for?

protip, phonenet not phonetalk

 

[sircabulon]

when I open up the chooser on any of the mac's I can't see the IIci. If I hook the macs up directly with a 8 pin printer cable, it works.

I have been googling for phone net local talk setup and reading through LEM articles and many 68k forum posts. Based on everything I have ready, it *should* work, but nothing mentions if they all use the same protocol or how to test for signals or whatever.

I did find the StarTalk project which is intriguing as well.

To cut the problem in half I have my IIci and PowerBook connected directly using phone net adapters and it isn't working. I may have a bad cable, resistor or adapter at this point.

 

[beachycove]

Obvious question: You have set networking to the right ports?

 

[Tashtari]

Check that the phone cables you're using have four pins - PhoneNet uses the second pair, and the average phone cable doesn't bother with anything but the innermost pair.

 

[sircabulon]

Obvious question: You have set networking to the right ports?

My IIci is the only computer that has the appletalk control panel which does have it set to the printer port. That said, I am using the printer port on all of them, and the do work with the 8 pin cable 1 to 1, so I don't think that is an issue *anymore*. I did beat my head on that for about 15 minutes yesterday.

 

[sircabulon]

Check that the phone cables you're using have four pins - PhoneNet uses the second pair, and the average phone cable doesn't bother with anything but the innermost pair.

the cables do have 4 wires, I will test continuity on them.

 

[beachycove]

Well, you need to install some networking software. Or check to see if the relevant bits have been deactivated in your systems.

 

[sircabulon]

Well, you need to install some networking software. Or check to see if the relevant bits have been deactivated in your systems.

Does the appletalk stuff care about phonenet? It works with a printer cable, so I have been assuming the software is good, but I haven't found anything so far that says different software is needed.

 

[mikes-macs]

There is no additional software needed. If the LocalTalk connection works with a printer cord then it should also work with your PhoneNet connectors. Also I use a mix of different brands of PhoneNet connectors on same network string and it works.
Two things to check. As mentioned above the phone cords you’re using. Also make sure they are all in the printer port.
You use the Network Control Panel on Macs that don’t have the AppleTalk control panel but there really isn’t anything to change in there unless you have another network card installed such as Ethernet and it is set to use that. In that case you simply switch to printer port or LocalTalk in the Network Control Panel.

I hope this helps.