Re: Farallon PhoneNet adapters

["**** ****" <***@***.com>]

That network is impressive, but apparently the network bug has only affected
him mildly. I have yet to get my Mac/Apple][ network going, but rest assured
it will be a reality soon. So far, I've managed to acquire the ISA Localtalk
PC card, which is somewhat supported by linux, which will act as my internet
gateway, and also a Farallon Etherwave adapter(don't know if this will do
netwrking, or only printers). In addition, I have 2 Daynaport boxes, which
both sport the mini-DIN8 connector and rj45, and a dc plug for which I can
neither figure out the voltage or amperage. I intend to use some or all of
these devices to bridge my localtalk segment to the ethernet segment. The
biggest hurdle so far has been finding pinouts for the female db9  connector
the ISA localtalk nic needs (I understand that the Mac 512 uses db9 for
localtalk also?) Feel free to correct me if this is wrong... but just in
case someone else is looking for it, it goes like this.

Female DB9 Localtalk Pinout

1 Ground
2 No Connection
3 Ground                              ________
4 TxD +                               \ 5 4 3 2 1 /
5 TxD-                                  \ 9 8 7 6  /
6 +12vdc                                ----------
7 Hsk
8 RxD+
9 RxD-

(MiniDIN8 pinouts for localtalk are easy to find with a web search)

Keep in mind, that the diagram should be reversed for the male db9, also, if
you dig around long enough, you may encounter an SGI rs422 port that uses
db9. This thing must have 20 different pinouts, depending on whether its an
Indy, or Oynx, or whatever... none of which can be correct from what I can
tell. I finally found this pinout on a mislabeled(maybe not, but this was
extra info, in any case) apple ftp technical info txt. No diagram included,
so I hope they use standard notation for these things. I can say that the
4,5,8,9 pins which are the RxD and TxD pins would line up with the line art
picture of a db9 localtalk dongle found in the ISA localtalk nic's user
manual. It's only a guess, but as long as the minus Rxd and Txd goes off to
the plus pair on another machine, you have yourself a localtalk network. On
each end, you should terminate that pair with +-5% 120ohm resistors, I seem
to remember reading it can't loop around to the other side. And what if you
don't want to use the crappy dongles? (MiniDIN-8 plugs can be ordered from
radio shack for less than $1 a piece, cat5 cable can be found anywhere, and
Home Depot has the cheapest rj45 plugs ive found, 50 for $10) Well,
eventually I'm planning on having the localtalk connector plugged into a
cat5 rj45 walljack, and on the other end, at my patch panel side of things,
I'm gonna make a rj45 daisy chain cable. It will consist of multiple rj45
plugs, each with 2 cables out of it, one to the other, and with a 120ohm
resistor at each end. Why would I do this, you ask? Most likely I'm
clinically insane, but I dare you to try and prove it in a court of law.
Besides, if I can move all my networks over to cat5, things are simpler. If
I can manage this, I will have an ethernet segment(existing), localtalk
segment, arcnet segment, and token ring segment. This sysadmin's nightmare
will have NOS's of Windows NT 3.1,3.51,4.0, and 5(2000 for the marketing
droids) Netware 3.11,4.10, and 5.0, Linux, and BSD using Appletalk, IPX-SPX,
TCP-IP, Netbeui and DLC. Client OS's include more x86 dos's, windows, and
macos's than you can shake a stick at. Not to mention an Apple2gs that has a
faster internet connection than 22 million AOL users(cable modem). BTW, if
anyone has any FDDI hardware they want to get rid of, please let me know. If
you can think of another protocol or networking medium I should add to this,
I appreciate all serious and semi-serious suggestions.