More Network from Heck rambles

[tux <pilgrim23@gmail.com>]

Yeah I know, its been a while folks...

Well it had been a  while since I had tinkered with an Apple II.  With
the recent advances in networking lately,  having a home net, even one
as weird as mine, is not that unusual.   Pioneers tend to get left in
the dust as the world moves on.   Ever Notice that?

  But a recent chat  on a2central  about TCP/IP made me curious so I
took a  squint at http://www.a2retrosystems.com/  to  look at this
Uthernet card that was being discussed.
Hum… just a few of these marvels are left, and tax return was still
burning in my pocket so…..  I bought one.
It arrived in the mail the same day  I heard  Ryan  Suenaga  had
died.    Synchronicity strikes again.  Ryan an old friend who had
advice me  for years on Apple II projects was also the guy who
organized the first ever group buy of LANceGS card in the US. I was in
that Group buy.  I will miss you Ryan  and was honored to  be your
friend.

  So as you see I already have a LANceGS card on my main GS which I
use often with Samurai  IRC  (http://www.ninjaforce.com/html/
products.html  -scroll to the second page)  using Marinetti 2.0/   I
never upgraded because I had my GS stable and decided to let sleeping
dogs lie.   I have learned with PEE  CEEs that  leaving the auto
update on was a sure way to develop incompatibilities.

  But I ALSO  happen to own a SECOND  IIgs ROM3 (thank You Goodwill
way back in the day) which lives in my basement shop and acts as a
sort of test bed for  various experiments.
  This GS  boasts a TranswarpGS with a  oscillator that barely boosts
it to a smidgen over 4mhz; the 8k cache card and a few other ancient
chips in it need to be upgraded to boost it beyond the  this barely
over the speed limit for a II performance.  But that is another tale.

  I recently had been playing with this machine with a Vulcan card
and  a IDE<>CF adapter and a range of CF cards from 8mb thru about
256mb trying to get it to format.   Alas no luck.  Vulcan gets very
confused when it doesn't see a track sector and head. Oh well.. I will
live long and procrastinate on that one.

   So I fired this puppy up instead on a ancient CMS SCSI card with a
CMS 40mb drive;  installed the latest Marinetti  http://www.apple2.org/marinetti/
3.0b1 then upgrade to TCPIP30b3 (same link) with the Uther Link layer
driver  http://www.a2retrosystems.com/Marinetti.htm

  Now GETTING this stuff down to that GS was a bit of a chore.  I
downloaded the goodies to a Macbook pro  which has no floppy drive.
Yeah  I know,  I could have configured  a nice Appletalk connection
and do it that way but have you tried to do classic Appletalk from OS
X 10.6 lately?  It ain’t happening.  So. I copied all my files to a
thumb drive then headed to the library where I have a Mystic Mac
That is a Color Classic with a  (modified) Performa 575 motherboard in
it sporting a  good 4gb of SCSI and  Mac OS 7.5.5  running a Apple II
file server.  And this is the important part: an old Mac Superdrive
floppy .

But no  USB and here I am with Apple II files on a USB.   Well I fired
up a PEE CEE with a floppy AND a USB port  and copied the files to a
PC floppy  then read those into the Mystic.  Then found a old 800k HFS
floppy and on the Mystic reformatted to ProDOS and copied the files to
it.  THEN  took the files back to the shop in a GS readable format…
Would one of you guys PLEASE invent a USB port for the Apple II?   my
sneakers were smokin!

Anyway,  with files where they belong on the CMS drive I ran the
install, shuffled files here and there, boot a few times, take a
look at TCP/IP in the GS Control Panel  and there it is: A Uther Link
Layer  where I can enter my IP, router and subnet,  save and….whadda
MEAN  ERROR!  <grumble>

So.. I fire off a email to a2retrtosystems and they send back…   “did
you un-check DHCP?”
Duh!   <face palm>  uh  no I had not.   So meekly  I do so  and reboot
and.  It works!  And that boys and girls took about a TENTH the time
and frustration the LANceGS did to get working.

Verdict:  Uthernet card:  good Mojo!    Cool idea,  and it works too!

-Bart   Keeper of the Network from Heck