Copying Floppies (or maybe Adding my SE to the network)

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2012, March 26 - 8:57pm

Gary

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Joined: 2011 Jul 21

Copying Floppies (or maybe Adding my SE to the network)

I have a HUGE collection of floppy disks that aren't getting any younger. I'd like to preserve the contents of many of them. To that end I have reactivated an old Mac Classic II machine that I have. It has about 50 MB of free disk space and a floppy drive that is in good condition.

The Classic II has Mac OS 7.0.1 installed.

I figured I'd use the Classic as a glorified floppy disk reader so I tried to set the system up as a file server. Configuring Sharing was relatively easy but connecting the system to my ethernet is turning out to be a problem.

I dug up an Asante Ethernet to Localtalk brigde (AsanteTalk) and plugged it in to my ethernet bridge. 2 of the 4 LEDs on the AsanteTalk lit up right away (power and link integrity). The receive light on the AsanteTalk began to blink.

I then plugged the LocalTalk side into the printer port of the Classic II. Nothing happened. The transmit light on the AsanteTalk remained unlit. The Classic II failed to show up on the network using any of the diagnostic tools I have (several).

Things I've tried:
1) using the modem port
2) swapping in an ethernet crossover cable
3) using a Mac SE (Mac OS 7.1) instead

The computer (either one) steadfastly refuses to show up in the Chooser's window of the other machine.

I have a couple of theories:
1) my network at 100 mb/s is too fast
2) the OS on the Classic is too old

What are YOUR theories?

Gary
I have this question too ( Reply

Edit: Replaced 'xxx 7' by 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

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2012, March 27 - 12:53am

Protocol 7

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Joined: 2010 Aug 7

Do you have another Mac with ethernet and serial? When I wanted to get files in and out of my compacts over the network I connected them to an ethernet-connected 7500 with a printer cable and used LocalTalk Bridge on the 7500 to make them show up on my network.

I was able to connect to a linux-based netatalk file server with this method, even when running 6.0.8L on the Classic II.

2012, March 27 - 9:00pm

(Reply to #2) #3

Gary

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Joined: 2011 Jul 21

I have only the SE and the Classic II. The SE has ethernet only because I added the ethernet card when I bought the SE. I was busy writing the product that eventually became Etherpeek (AG Group) and used the SE as my development machine.

Other stuff on my network:
3 G4 towers
wireless router
a couple of Chromebooks
a laptop PC running XP

I will isolate one of the G4s so my configuration looks like this
G4 -> 10mb switch -> AsanteTalk ->SE

and see what happens.

Thanks.

Gary

2012, March 27 - 7:08am

bertyboy

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Joined: 2009 Jun 14

What's on the other end of the Ethernet ?

I used a similar setup, Mac SE and IIci years ago to image all my floppies and get them on my G4s and G5. I used a Farallon iPrint Adapter, similar to your device. As I remember the connection only works one-way, from the recent Mac to the SE / Classic II. And then you must ensure that you have AppleTalk enabled on the new Mac over the desired interface.

2012, March 27 - 12:05pm

ruk

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Joined: 2011 Dec 10

I have a similar setup:

SE -> AsanteTalk -> 10/100Switch -> Linux with Netatalk, PowerMac MacOs 9.2.2.

That works well, but there are caveats:

1. The AsanteTalk has 10MBit/s-only Ethernet-Port and doesn't like auto-negotiate from the switch.
You must have a switch which is working by default at 10MBit. My switch is a 10/100 MBit switch that tries 10 and THAN 100 MBit. Most of the modern switches try 100 and than 10.

2. The order of booting up the devices is important: (1st) power up the Mac, than (2nd) the Asantebox. After waiting until link lights are up, than (3rd) plug in the ethernet cable into the AsanteTalk box. Then the third LED must come up on the AsanteTalk.

Maybe that helps... Good luck.

2012, March 28 - 8:37pm

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

@Gary:

The computer (either one) steadfastly refuses to show up in the Chooser's window of the other machine.
I have a couple of theories:
1) my network at 100 mb/s is too fast
2) the OS on the Classic is too old

I doubt that the 100 mb/s network is too fast. It should be backwards compatible with 10mb/s.
I can access my G4s running 9.2.2 via older Macs running SSW 7.1.1 - AppleTalk over TCP/IP.

Do you have MacTCP/IP drivers installed? Set unique IP addresses for each Mac?

On SSW 7.1.1 - for me, these must be present:
Control Panels "MacTCP" (v2.0.6) "NetWork" (System installed)
Extensions: "EtherTalk Phase 2", "Thread Manager" (v2.1).

I used to, when I had a Mac SE, ran networking over an Asante SCSI to Ethernet solution. It worked great but I can't recall its setup too well. But I think I needed to disable any Apple ethernet extensions except have EtherTalk Phase 2 enabled and the Thread Manager also was important (but not System Installed, it needed to be sourced elsewhere).

2012, March 30 - 11:28am

Gary

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Joined: 2011 Jul 21

Here is what I discovered. I started by isolating the SE and a single G4 on a private network:
G4 <-> 10mb switch <-> AsanteTalk <->SE

with nothing else attached. I turned on the SE and G4. I set the SE to share its hard drive. I then opened the Chooser window on both machines.
Next I connected the power cord to the AsanteTalk box.

This sequence brought life to the connection and allowed me to copy floppies from the SE (after first copying them to the SE's hard drive) to the G4. Problem solved.

Thanks to each of you who offered suggestions.

Gary