RetroGeekery: Primordial Mac on a LAN?

Factual Questions
1

TL/DR version: How do I get a LocalTalk System 6 Mac onto an ethernet-based LAN as an AppleTalk and TCP-IP client? I have an AsantéPrint LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge but can’t get it working.

details:
I maintain a “computer museum” consisting of all my prior-edition Macs: an original LC, my PowerMac 7100, a pair of “WallStreet” G3 PowerBooks, a pair of 17" G4 PowerBooks, and the match to this Sandy Bridge i7 MacBook Pro. With the addition of an ethernet PDS card to the LC and a 10baseT transceiver to the 7100’s native AAUI port, I have them all on a LAN, plugged into a NetGear 16 port Gigabit switch, all of them getting an IP address and all of them running some version of Timbuktu (which has astonishingly excellent backwards compatibility, so I can remote in and remotely control a System 7.6 box from this MacOS X 10.11.6 main computer).

The one relic missing from the computer museum was the first I ever owned, a Macintosh SE that I discarded when the accelerator fried out and I had no interest at the time in a native 8 MHz / 2 MB RAM computer. Well, I just replaced it (for the obvious geeky cred bragging rights of having at least a facsimile of all the computers I’ve ever owned): a substitute Macintosh SE with a difficult-to-find Applied Engineering 40 MHz '030 accelerator sporting 16 MB of RAM (which not only works on the SE that theoretically maxes out at 4 but works under System 6 which isn’t supposed to be able to address that much RAM… AE did some cute tricks!)

I couldn’t find a Mac SE PDS ethernet card (not yet at any rate) but I scored an AsantePrint LocalTak to Ethernet bridge. I thought that would let me set up the little SE so that it could participate in an AppleTalk network (the 7100 has classic file sharing enabled; the SE has AppleShare installed for the Chooser) and also get an IP (MacTCP is set up and LocalTalk is an option for it). Can’t get it working. I have the Asante manager software installed on the 7100 under MacOS 8.6 and it sees the Asanté device

PowerBook G3 under MacOS 9 sees the 7100’s AppleTalk share

The SE, on the AsantePrint connector to the LAN, does not

MacTCP Control Panel under System 6 on the SE showing LocalTalk as a MacTCP option. The IP Address shown here is manually set up under the “More…” button. If I utilize “obtain from server” I get 0.0.0.0 instead; it isn’t seen by the router as a participant either way.
I don’t have prior experience: back when the SE was my everyday computer, it went online courtesy of a 2400 baud modem, and MacTCP did what it needed to using MacPPP; I never networked one with other Macs although at school the Mac lab certainly had all the SEs and SE/30s and older Mac Plusses networked so they could access a file server and print to the LaserPrinters — don’t know if they had a part ethernet / part LocalTalk network or not.

Anyone able to help me get this little toaster onto my LAN? (I have Timbuktu of the System 6 vintage… it’s too old for the 10.11.6 box to connect to directly but I could daisy-chain to it via the 7100 as an inbetween-station)

2

It has been decades since I did any of this, but the fist thing I would do is to configure the IP address , netmask, and router manually, and see if you get any communication.

I seem to recall that the Asante bridge wasn’t a full-fledged IP interface, just for printing, but I may be mistaken.

3

Someone else told me that about the Asante bridge device, that it’s no good for anything but printing. Does that mean…

• there’s some other LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge that I could obtain instead that handles both AppleTalk and TCP/IP? or

• that I need to hold out for an ethernet PDS card if I want to put this box on the LAN?
Ultimately I don’t need TCP/IP: Timbuktu of that vintage runs over AppleTalk, and if I can get it and the 7100 on speaking terms over AppleTalk I can TB2 into the 7100 and TB2 from the 7100 to the SE. I’ve daisy-chained Timbuktu connections successfully before in fact. Tested it on the LC which has a System 6 partition.

ETA: I did manually input 255.255.255.0, the router’s IP address, and a manual IP that’s within the DHCP range of the router (but not in current use by any other device on the network) but the router doesn’t see it as a client the way it sees all the other devices. I suppose to be sure I need to install an internet-savvy system-6 compatible application, maybe Fetch 2.0 or something and verify that no it isn’t online… but I’m pretty sure it isn’t.

4

Some good information here.

5

I got myself a DaynaPort SCSI-to-ethernet adapter and now it’s online :slight_smile:

I can connect to the SE from the other computers using Timbuktu, which is good for both remote control and also for transferring files. I discovered that my Basilisk II emulator, which has System 7.6 installed, can connect directly to the SE over TCP/IP. Nice!

6

Well, I think you win this month’s “Cool, but useless” project contest.

:slight_smile:

7

Oh yes, that’s true. Of the entire computer museum, very few of the machines serve any real purpose, and some that do (like the G3 PowerBook that can boot MacOS 9 and hence can make use of a USB slide scanner that doesn’t have an OS X driver) are only rarely used. I doubt the SE can do anything I couldnt do with the vMac emulator.

8

I keep Sheepshaver around for the very unlikely event that I need to modify some PCB designs I made decades ago.

9

Yep. Sheepshaver is nice. Good ol’ MacOS 8.6 :slight_smile:

10

i seem to remember connecting to a network using an Asante adapter and the Chooser.