The Network from Heck version 6.III

[stopspam@thesource.gs (Bart)]

The Network from Heck version  6.III

  For some time now I have been pushing my net in two directions. Moving 
towards the present, I have attempted to upgrade my Macs
and PCs to more current models. This I do shopping at my favorite electronics 
stores:
Yards Sales, Goodwill, St Vincent DePaul, etc. In other words: I do not wish 
to dump a ton of money into computers. Andy Groves, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs 
have enough millions thank you very much and do not require my shekels to make 
payment on their latest Leer jet or the like.  Purchasing used and upgrading 
is a far better way to go for those who daily face adverse economic 
determinism.  

With that in mind, my latest and greatest Mac is now a G3!  It is actually a 
older Power Tower Pro I bought in  pieces and pretty well
dinged up at Goodwill for 15 bucks.  As I got it, it had 8 megs of memory, a 
180MHz PPC604 CPU, no hard drive and a banged up case missing face plates and 
scratched up.  Now it has 160 megs memory,  10 gigs of  (5) SCSI hard drive 
(recovered mainly from dead Sparcs) and a Sonnet Crescendo upgrade to a 450Mhz 
G3. Total amount spent on this  (now equiv. to) circa 1999-2000 vintage   
Mac?  Apex. $240 and a LOT of work.  The Power Tower now sits in the library 
under my desk next to a Compaq PIII 600Mhz Wintel box and acts as the bridge 
between the rest of the net and a Apple IIGS ROM 3  on the right side of the 
desk.
And now a word  about the other direction:

Recently with thanks  to some of our fair Apple II  community (Thanks Aaron!  
Thanks Greg!),  I have  restored to working order an ancient Apple III.  Also 
thanks to another individual I have a 3 meg archive of Apple III software that 
with the use of my network (Download on PC via DSL,  pass to Mac via COPSTALK 
on Ethernet, pass to Apple IIGS via Localtalk and Localtalk bridge) I was
able to unshrink and use.  I also have the disks that are available as .do 
files with the Sara Emulator that via ADT and a IIe I was able to turn back 
into 140k floppies.
Well now, a working III was not enough (By the way, this one was built from 2 
different dysfunctional IIIs I cannibalized into one working one), and since I 
also have 3 (2 in case, 1 not in case) ProFILE drives each capable of holding 
the unbelievable amount of FIVE MEGS of data!  I just had to get them up.  
With the addition of a ProFILE card (that came with manual and Drivers!) it 
is... Alive. 
Humm  man (nor machine) doth not compute alone.  Network network, how does one 
network.  Ethernet?  LOL.  Well now, if Joachim Lange wants to write a SOS 
driver for the LANceGS then...)  
But seriously, there has GOT to be a way to get this beast on the Network from 
Heck.

Eureka !  <.- never been there, hear it�s a nice town..  I figured it out!

Using a Mac IIci configured as a NetBSD box, a VERY LONG serial cable, and  a 
bit of moving things about (ever picked up an Apple III?  Dang them puppies be 
HEAVY!), I connected the III to the BSD system  as a dumb terminal.  On the 
III side I loaded Communications Manager and set the III to VT-52 mode and a 
speed of 9600 baud.  On the BSD side I used the NetBSD loader to set
the port also to 9600 and to echo boot to a serial console. 

I can now signin as a semi-dumb terminal.  Semi?  Well, using the save file 
function in the Apple III communication package, coupled
with a Xmodem emulation on the BSD side, and FTP, I can actually download a 
file and put it on the ProFILE.  Thus, an Apple III is on  my Network from 
Heck and, by extension, directly coupled to the Internet(well serial to 
Ethernet to firewall to Ethernet  to DSL to
coupled to the Internet. 

I looked around and as of today the Network from Heck is operating on the 
following Operating Systems:

Mac Systems 7.1 7.5.3 7.5.5 8.1 and 8.6

Apple II on DOS 3.3 ProDOS various, GS/OS  both 5.x and 6x depending

SX-64 on whatever ya call it.(Commodore�s thingy)

NetBSD and Linux

BeOS

MS-DOS 6.22 with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Windows 3.0 (depending on 
which I use)

DR-DOS 5.0 and Win 2.03 (on a PCTransporter in  a GS)

Windows 98SE, and Windows 2000

And now:   SOS

And they all talk to each other!  
------------------
One of these days I gotta figure out somethin useful to do with my time.
------------------

Useful links:
 

Sara, the Apple III emulator: 
http://www.blackcatsystems.com/software/sara.html

A page on the III from the maker of Sara the Emulator:  
http://www.blackcatsystems.com/software/apple3.html

Washington Apple Pi (a User Group that is the Keeper of the Apple III flame: 
http://www.wap.org/

WAP�s A3 page:  http://www.wap.org/a3/

A good collection of Apple III software in DAR format  
ftp://ftp.wvu.edu/pub/apple3/

Note: there were some Apple III files on Asimov last time I looked as well.
 

-Bart
this epistle is imortalized for later refrence at 
http://www.syndicomm.com/~pilgrimer/net/a3Net6iii.htm