SE/30 networking question: How do I connect to OS X machines

[equill]

Thank you for your kind offer, JDW, but it was enough that you fingered OS 8.1 as the resting-place for OT 1.3. I have the CD Z-97050-315-A, which contains OT 1.3.1. Only my PBs 520c and 540c have OS 8.1 installed, and that had slipped my capacious sieve-like memory for the moment. I shall disinter them tomorrow, from whichever carton they came in late March to my present (new) address, and remake the acquaintance with their vv. of OT. As for my email address, I shall PM you separately.

Thank you also for the link to Inside Macintosh's OT volume, one that had hitherto escaped my eye. I see that its year of most-recent update is a few years later than most others of the series.

de

 

[superpantoufle]

All of this, for some reason I can't figure, does not work on french Systems. I tried for years, with every possible combinations of OpenTransport, AppleShare and Chooser, to no avail. Since I read in several places, including this very thread, that it was indeed possible, I assume there is an issue with localised (or at least french) Systems.

Now today I wanted to be sure, after reading you guys. So I installed Mac OS 8.1 US on one of my PowerBook. And it worked just fine. Incredible, believe it or not, but it was the first time I was actually able to share files via AppleShare from a 68k Mac to my Leopard MacBook Pro. With all my other machines, for the several past years, on different flavors of System 7.x to 8.x, the Chooser always crashed with a -1 error just after clicking the Connect button. Works as expected from OS 9.x to 10.x, though.

Sorry, this is slightly off-topic since I bring my own problems in. But I thought it could be an interesting question!

 

[porter]

My understanding is that leopard no longer supports AppleTalk at all. So it's all AppleShare over IP.

 

[JDW]

Although my earlier post mentions this clearly, I wish to again emphasize the fact that you are not forced to use OS 8.1 to accomplish networking between an old 68k Mac and your modern OS X Mac. You can use System 7.5.5. You simply need to replace some networking components of System 7.5.5 with newer versions as described in my other post in this thread. And those newer versions happen to come with OS 8.1.

Why do I say this? Because some among us have SE/30's without any IIfx or IIsi ROM. That means those folks can only run up to System 7.5.5. Without the IIfx or IIsi ROM you will not be able to install OS 8.1 in the normal way to conveniently access the required files, but perhaps TomeViewer would work on the OS 8.1 installer? (I've not tried it.) Even so, I do have copies of the individual files myself, as I am sure other members here do.

 

[JDW]

I was reading through this Macintouch report today and spotted some interesting info about how Netatalk could be used on Snow Leopard Macs to solve AppleTalk printing and fileserving problems. My older post in this thread talks about how to connect to vintage Macs using OS 10.4.x. But of course, most of us use 10.6 now, which breaks the OS X filesharing solution I posted before due to the lack of a compatible AppleTalk protocol (in OS 10.6) for those older Macs. But it would appear that Netatalk brings back that compatibility by restoring the needed protocol under 10.6! I certainly will be giving Netatalk a try when I find some free time, but for now I am quite curious -- have any of you been able to network with old System 7 Macs via Netatalk? (I am talking about "file sharing," not printing.)

 

[Gorgonops]

I certainly will be giving Netatalk a try when I find some free time, but for now I am quite curious -- have any of you been able to network with old System 7 Macs via Netatalk? (I am talking about "file sharing," not printing.)

Netatalk works as advertised and is a complete no-brainer on a Linux server. The latest versions even support Time Machine. It's stable, simple to set up (by UNIX daemon standards) and I've used it for over a decade.

That said, Googling the mailing lists/forums suggest that Netatalk is pretty broken when it comes to running on OS X as the server. Unless it's been magically fixed recently the best chance you'd have for Netatalk fixing your problems would be to set up a Linux machine to act as a file and print server and use it as a way station between the Classic and the Neo-Macs.

(I still have 10.5 on both my MacBook Pros, so I can't try compiling it myself on 10.6 to see exactly what problems there may be.)

 

[napabar]

I certainly will be giving Netatalk a try when I find some free time, but for now I am quite curious -- have any of you been able to network with old System 7 Macs via Netatalk? (I am talking about "file sharing," not printing.)

Netatalk works as advertised and is a complete no-brainer on a Linux server. The latest versions even support Time Machine. It's stable, simple to set up (by UNIX daemon standards) and I've used it for over a decade.

That said, Googling the mailing lists/forums suggest that Netatalk is pretty broken when it comes to running on OS X as the server. Unless it's been magically fixed recently the best chance you'd have for Netatalk fixing your problems would be to set up a Linux machine to act as a file and print server and use it as a way station between the Classic and the Neo-Macs.

(I still have 10.5 on both my MacBook Pros, so I can't try compiling it myself on 10.6 to see exactly what problems there may be.)

Hopefully, Netatalk gets tweaked better for OS X, and someone writes a GUI front end for it.

Anybody know what flavors of AppleTalk it shares down to? All the way to 1.x?

 

[Gorgonops]

Anybody know what flavors of AppleTalk it shares down to? All the way to 1.x?

Wading through the documentation would probably tell you. The oldest System I ever used it with was the hacked 7.0 that's included with A/UX. (Worked perfectly transparently through the chooser.)