A bridge mac system... something running System 7 or 8 with working superdrive, ethernet and a cdrom. Transferring files to our 800KB floppy based Mac IIcx, Mac SE, and Apple IIc+ is next to impossible otherwise.
I would not call it "next to impossible" to provide these capabilities. I'd simply state that supporting these capabilities on System 7 Macs is limited compared to 21st century computing standards. Why? because in those days, support was very specific to brands and models of devices; and because networking was "siloed" to either Apple/Mac or IBM; and of course pre-Internet. System 8 was "better" but had many of the same problems, and is too big for some of the oldest Macs. and, some of these Macs came out before CD-ROMs, or Ethernet, were in common use. I'll grant, this may be too much work for your school's interest in vintage computers. Copying floppies is the most straightforward way. These constraints have been forgotten in the "plug it in and it works" world of the 21st century. (shrug) there's hobbyist work-arounds and products that provide "Internet connections" to most any vintage computer - I'm not referring to 21st C products in my remarks below. (And please don't pick nits - I'm trying to provide some directions here, answer questions.) In your photo, the Mac between the IIc and the iMac with the Dell-brand LCD, is an old 68K Mac of some sort - I'm guessing that is your IIcx. It should have a 1.4M floppy drive, and should be running System 6 or 7. Later System 7 on that machine can create 1.4M Mac-format disks as well as 800K Mac format disks; it should be able to format "PC" S-DOS 800K and 1.4M too, and transfer files. OS 7.5.3 was released by Apple decades ago as a complete set of installable disk images. a later version of (I think) Disk Copy would be needed to mount disk images. Or they may be as a self-expanding set of files. Ask around for such a set of images or a CD disk. YOu may need Apple CD-ROM extensions too. Earlier Macs which did not have 1.4M drives could not of course read or write 1.4M Mac or PC disks. The SE "superdrive" model had different ROMs and IWM chip from the SE model and 1.4M drives were supported by those chips. There's other compact Macs with 1.4M drives. I think the Apple II 3.5" disks are "ProDOS" format, and of course 800K. Ask someone in the Apple II community about transfers with 68K Macs, and appropriate 800K drives for Apple II models. As for Ethernet: older Macs with NuBus slots can accommodate NuBus Ethernet cards. But "Ethernet" doesn't give you magic "transfer" capabilities, especially between Macs and Windows/MS-DOS systems; or "to the Internet". It's complicated, and beyond me too. CD-ROMs: older SCSI based Macs may be able to accommodate some external SCSI CD-ROM drives. However, System 7 as Apple supplied only supported Apple CD-ROM products with specific brand/model of CD-ROM drives. One needed specific "extensions" to support CD-ROMs at all, and also to support other specific brand/models of CD-ROM drives. And...that's "read only". Writable CD-ROM drives were supported in OS 8, but again specific brand/models only. My suggestion? Use Iomega ZIP-disk technology, in Mac or PC formats. Many Macs can operate external SCSI ZIP 100 drives, from Mac Plus and up. Even more recent Windows systems can use IDE or USB ZIP drives. And older Macs with IDE (PATA) supported ZIP drives. Those provide 100 megabytes of space, plenty for 1980's and 90's computing. I don't know of an Apple II ZIP drive solution with 20th century technology. Serial file transfer is tedious, but it works when nothing else will. But of course, the popular solution for mass-file storage, is modern use of flash-drive technology. Typically SD-card reader/writers made for various vintage systems. Likewise, for "internet access", there are 21st century Ethernet or WiFi adapters that hobbyists offer for specific vintage computers. I do not keep track of these, so that's all I can say about them. I'm busy enough (obviously) with the old stuff. Herb Johnson http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/mac.html -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
On 10/24/2016 2:47 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I would not call it "next to impossible" to provide these capabilities. I'd simply state that supporting these capabilities on System 7 Macs is limited compared to 21st century computing standards. Why? because in those days, support was very specific to brands and models of devices; and because networking was "siloed" to either Apple/Mac or IBM; and of course pre-Internet. System 8 was "better" but had many of the same problems, and is too big for some of the oldest Macs. and, some of these Macs came out before CD-ROMs, or Ethernet, were in common use.
[...] No disagreement from me and I especially appreciate the suggestion of the Zip Drive. Perhaps I should have said "Next to impossible with the current financial situation"! The IIcx is currently non-functioning (brand new power supply, so probably needs recapping... not something I'm even remotely qualified to think about doing). The SE is 800K only, the Apple IIc+ is 800K only. We do have a Floppy EMU for the SE (and really need to buy a second one for the IIc+... but we have CFFA3000s in the IIe and IIgs, so that's not so much of an issue). The biggest problem, however, is that finding disk images for that vintage mac stuff is a big pain. For example, I would love for the students to be able to play Dark Castle on the SE, but while I can find individual executables, finding a working disk image has been next to impossible. And the bank, i.e. me, has run a bit short at this point so the modern flash solutions will be slow coming. :) I do not know of a modern disk editor that supports Mac disk images (I'd love to know if I'm wrong - and we can handle literally any platform). The images on the Apple II series are so plentiful, that, ironically, we rarely have to use a disk editor like CiderPress. Best wishes, -Adam
No disagreement from me and I especially appreciate the suggestion of the Zip Drive. Perhaps I should have said "Next to impossible with the current financial situation"!
The IIcx is currently non-functioning (brand new power supply, so probably needs recapping... not something I'm even remotely qualified to think about doing). The SE is 800K only, the Apple IIc+ is 800K only.
We do have a Floppy EMU for the SE (and really need to buy a second one for the IIc+... but we have CFFA3000s in the IIe and IIgs, so that's not so much of an issue). The biggest problem, however, is that finding disk images for that vintage mac stuff is a big pain. For example, I would love for the students to be able to play Dark Castle on the SE, but while I can find individual executables, finding a working disk image has been next to impossible. And the bank, i.e. me, has run a bit short at this point so the modern flash solutions will be slow coming. :)
I do not know of a modern disk editor that supports Mac disk images (I'd love to know if I'm wrong - and we can handle literally any platform). The images on the Apple II series are so plentiful, that, ironically, we rarely have to use a disk editor like CiderPress.
Best wishes,
-Adam
Adam, macintoshgarden.org has all the disk images you could want, including dark castle. I made floppies of it for use in my exhibit at VCF this past April. Also, macgui.com has some the macintosh garden doesn't and vice versa. Pretty much anything you could want, including a fair amount of obscure drivers for hardware etc., especially on macgui. I can help with all of this as I do it constantly for both Apple II and compact macs. I prefer floppies and hard drives over the disk emulators so mostly use them (sd based floppy Solutions) to make real floppies from images. Also, early versions of disk copy on the compact macs can write prodos 3.5" disks. I e used it to get 3.5" images onto disks for the apple II and iic+. Contact me off-list about this and I'm gathering a few of the consoles you listed as well. Just finished setting up my retro video Game Center in my family room last week, so I have all my spare/extra consoles listed and in storage waiting for a home or my other consoles to break!! Got an intellivision ready for you as well. Tony
Herb what would be needed to make a Linux box do Appletalk? Would that work as a server for the System 7.x & 8.x boxes? A central Beige box running some form of recent Unix (BSD or Linux). Should be useful as a central server and if my Pi/Atari 1050 drive replacement works as well I hope the central server could work with that also. BTW, I think I found the Ethernet boards (Finally). Mac -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 10/24/2016 04:32 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Herb what would be needed to make a Linux box do Appletalk? Would that work as a server for the System 7.x & 8.x boxes?
See "netatalk" for this...been around for a couple of decades and works great. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On Oct 24, 2016, at 16:53, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 10/24/2016 04:32 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote: Herb what would be needed to make a Linux box do Appletalk? Would that work as a server for the System 7.x & 8.x boxes?
See "netatalk" for this...been around for a couple of decades and works great.
Just make sure you use the 2.x branch; they dumped AppleTalk in 3.x. My Netatalk 2.6 server can talk to everything from my Mac SE (with Ethernet, running System 6 and 7) to my 2015 MacBook Pro running 10.11. Just be careful moving between servers, preserving the resource forks between machines can be a royal pain. Also be careful sharing files between Samba and Netatalk, as the metadata doesn't always play nice together. - Dave
On Mon, 24 Oct 2016, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 10/24/2016 04:32 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Herb what would be needed to make a Linux box do Appletalk? Would that work as a server for the System 7.x & 8.x boxes?
See "netatalk" for this...been around for a couple of decades and works great.
-Dave
I did this for my first VCF exhibit in 2006: http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/VCF-East2006/ I had a IIE with a workstation card and a IIGS connected by Phonenet to an Asante Ethernet to Localtalk adapter, which allowed them to talk to Netatalk on the Linux machine. I don't remember the specifics after all these years, but I found some of the documentation from the exhibit: http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Apple/AppleII.pdf Instead of the Asante adapter, you could use a Cayman Gatorbox or Kinetics Fastpath to bridge the two networks. Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/
Thanks to all, who posted references to Netatalk 2.X, and also Apple II's using such resources. I'm a little surprised that Appletalk/Ethernet printer interfaces can be used, but in the end all they have to do is pass packets. I'll look it over for my purposes, but it looks a little challenging for mere mortals (including me) to use. On handling Mac disk images. There's some not-freeware that manages Mac volumes under Windows, but it's not expensive. Presumably Linux can mount Mac volumes once physically connected. also good to see some Mac software image archives, thanks for those links. Looks like Adam could use a IIci or IIcx system. I like them myself, I need to fix my motherboards. Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preservation of 1970's computing email: hjohnson AAT retrotechnology DOTT com alternate: herbjohnson ATT retrotechnology DOTT info
participants (8)
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Adam Michlin -
Dave McGuire -
David Riley -
Herb Johnson -
Mike Loewen -
Neil Cherry -
Systems Glitch -
Tony Bogan