Re: AsanteTalk Bridge Workaround for Apple II

[glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu>]

Rusty wrote:
(snip)

> Prior to purchasing the AsanteTalk, I had been using my roommate's
> GatorBox which "just worked" with the IIGS. Unfortunately, the
> GatorBox died, and all I could find was an AsanteTalk box. When I
> first hooked it up, it didn't seem to work at all. The Apple IIGS did
> not see any file servers on the network.

> At the time, I was using netatalk 2.0.3 as the afp server for my
> network. Through a process of trial and error, I was able to get my
> IIGS to work through the AsanteTalk bridge if and only if I did _both
> of_ the following two things on my netatalk server:

> -Configured atalkd into "router" mode through the use of the -router
> flag in atalkd.conf

> -Configured atalkd to advertise a zone name into the AppleTalk network
> in atalkd.conf

As you say AsanteTalk is a bridge, not a router.  With a router like
the GatorBox, the localtalk net has a different network number
from the ethertalk side.

The AsanteTalk bridge allows one (maybe more than one) device from
the localtalk side to connect through to ethertalk.  It does not
use the net number to separate them.  As some point it has to
propagate the net number from ethertalk to localtalk so that the
localtalk device gets assigned the right net and host.

It has been a while since I used one (I still have some), but
it does make sense that there should be at least one router
advertising a network number so that it can be propagated.

-- glen