Re: What is this?

["William Girnius" <thedm@sunflower.com>]

Hey Jason, what you have is whats called a Apple talk connector, which also
means, more than likely that your Imagewriter has the "localtalk option
board" Installed.

This allows macintosh, and Apple ]['s such as the //GS with built in
appletalk to access the printer over a network, the ][ series can also do it
with the Localtalk workstation card.  These devices are still commercially
available and used where network speed is not very critical.  They talk at
230k sec, much slower than ethernet.  The //gs has this buit in as do almost
all macintosh up to the mac IIfx.  To use it, you fire up the mac, or //gs
and enable macintosh.  On a //gs the appletalk connector goes on the printer
port and slot 7 is turned to "appletalk" in the setup.  On  a mac, simply
turn appletalk on in the network control panel. These connectors are then
daisychained using mac or //gs  printer cable. There is a more common
version of the same box called PhoneNet that uses regualar telephone wire,
much cheaper than printer cables.


If you need any more help. or, if you'd like to sell that appletalk option
board let me know. I need one.
Jason Whorton wrote in message <6pv31i$nmi$1@supernews.com>...
>Hello.  I have an Apple II hardware item, and I am not sure what it is.  I
>think it is a device to allow AppleTalk sharing of an ImageWriter II, but I
>want to find out for certain.  I bought an ImageWriter II and it was
>connected to the back at the 8-pin Mini-DIN connector.  The device is an
>Apple product with the part number 590-0565-A.  It has an 8-pin Mini-DIN
>connector on one end of an approximately 24" cable and a small box 1" X
1.5"
>X 2" with two round four-pin connectors (though the large pin of the group
>appears to only be hollow on the inside, with no electrical connection)
with
>each one having a pair of arrows on top to label them.  One arrow in each
>pair points up and one points down.
>    If anyone can tell me what it is, I would really appreciate it.
>
>Thank you,
>Jason Whorton
>
>
>
>