Re: IIgs netboot idea.

["Rusty" <rdekema@gmail.com>]

On Apr 11, 9:25 pm, Tristan Mumford <xtristan.xmumf...@xgmail.xcom>
wrote:
> G'day!
> ...
> So if there's anyone across the ocean that wants to give this a try or has
> already done so I'd love to hear about it.

I have (on loan from my roommate) a device called a Cayman Gatorbox
CS. It sounds fairly similar to the device of which you speak. The
Gatorbox has an ethernet plug and a localtalk plug, and it will bridge
the two networks together at layer 2.

I am currently mounting file shares from my FreeBSD server on my Apple
IIGS via the AppleShare functionality in the GS/OS 6.0.1 finder.

I have the "netatalk" package (which includes atalkd, which manages
the AppleTalk protocol for the machine, and afpd which does the actual
file serving) installed on the FreeBSD machine, as well as having the
AppleTalk protocol enabled on the machine's kernel. In order for it to
work with the GS/OS, you have to tell afpd to use the uams_randnum.so
authentication library. (I am not exactly sure what scrambling or
encryption this method uses for the passwords; presumably it is more
secure than uams_plaintext, but who knows by how much. On my home
network, it matters very little anyway.)

So, once you have the GS/OS up and running, you can mount network
shares off of any filesystem that FreeBSD supports, using my current
setup. (It doesn't matter if the GS has an FST for the actual
filesystem on the FreeBSD machine; the FreeBSD machine exports the
files in the share on a file-by-file basis, and the GS/OS uses the
ATalk.fst (or something like that, I'm not sure if that's the exact
name) FST in order to interpret the mounted volume).

There is a program called a2boot that is included in the netatalk
distribution. This program is supposed to extend netatalk's
functionality in order to allow you to boot an Apple IIGS from the
netatalk+a2boot server. Unfortunately, a2boot needs some bootstrap
files to send over the network to the Apple IIGS, namely:

ProDOS16 Boot_Blocks
Apple IIe Boot Blocks
ProDOS16 Image

(I would imagine you don't actually need the Apple IIE Boot Blocks
file to boot an IIGS, but who knows.)

I do not have any of these files, so I have never been able to netboot
any of my IIGSes.

I am led to believe that these files are supplied with the "AppleShare
Server 3.0" diskette for the Macintosh (System 7, I think). I think I
have a copy of this disk at my office somewhere, but it will take some
work to find it. It's also possible that I ended up giving it back to
the person from whom I had borrowed it. I will have to check to be
sure.

If I can find and read this disk, I will post a link to the boot files
here. Alternatively, if anyone else has this disk, I would really
appreciate it if you could post or send me a copy of them.

Finally, does anyone know how to netboot (even in theory) a ROM 01
IIGS? AppleTalk does not show up as a boot option in my "Slots"
Control Panel at all. Is the idea supposed to be that you just set it
to Slot 7, or {Slot 1, Slot 2}, the slot you are using for AppleTalk?
Or are ROM 01 GSes not able to netboot, perhaps?

Kindest Regards,
Rusty D.