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Comment by _qbjt | Hacker News Reader

Oh wow, thank you for this. :) I was just restoring an iMac G3, the Flower Power edition, and ran into more trouble than I expected trying to transfer data via a USB flash drive. Filesystems that Mac OS 9 should support were either not mounting properly or causing errors during file transfer when formatted on a modern Apple or Linux system (exFAT was the only one I could get to work for some reason). I’ve been casually looking around for some sort of NAS solution that would be compatible with older versions of Mac OS, but with native scp I can just download files from a Linux box (perhaps a dedicated Raspberry Pi) and skip right to the fun part: exploring all of the weird, cool and charming software and games from this era. So cool!

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For classic macs with ethernet ports, the simplest method I have found is to host a basic FTP server on another computer (e.g. you can set one up easily enough on a Raspberry Pi) and use an Ftp client such as Fetch on the mac side. I use this method to get files to and from my LC III, which also functions as a bridge baby to the really old macs via the Appletalk serial port.

This is what I do, and it works pretty well if a little cumbersome at times. I have a little museum I've built in my office during the pandemic that consists of:

- SE/30

- Docked Duo 280c

- 7100/80

- PowerComputing PT Pro 250

- NeXT TurboStation

My primary Linux workstation is where I browse for old software and download it, then I get at stuff from the vintage Macs via FTP using either Interarchy or Fetch.

Rather than run a bunch of Ethernet cables all over the place I put little Ethernet to Wifi bridge adapters on them. Works great.

Neat! I just have an LC III, SE and Powerbook 1400 running at the moment. Always wanted to find a NeXT...

> Rather than run a bunch of Ethernet cables all over the place I put little Ethernet to Wifi bridge adapters on them. Works great.

That's genius, thanks for the tip.

I had a next slab in the 00s but I had to get rid of it because of space. Recently, I had a Pentium 3 random machine and I finally managed to install OpenStep 4.2 on it. The trick is to find the absolute latest patch to have the VESA driver so you can have color.

If you are curious about NeXT, I highly recommend finding a random intel pc from the 90s and installing the intel NeXTStep versions or OpenStep.

NeXTSTEP is also really great on PA-RISC, if you want an oddball combination.

Lol there's also the Canon ObjectStation if you want to get really obscure

Where'd you get the PowerComputing? Clones like that are going to be the most rare.

Just unrelenting hunting on Craigslist, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace. I think I got the PTPro on Craigslist.

I actually have a PowerCenter 150 slim-profile Desktop (and a spare Sonnet G3 400/1M CPU upgrade for it) that's currently in storage. I haven't decided if I should try to find a good home for it yet. The PowerTower Pro replaced it in my office collection because I wanted a box I could cram full of esoteric tech:

- Formac Proformance 3 (3DLabs Permedia3)

- 12MB 3Dfx Voodoo2

- OrangePC 660 w/ K6-III

- Digidesign Audiomedia III

- ATTO Dual UltraSCSI

- Sonnet Encore G4 800/1M CPU (which is both cool and also finicky as all get out)

It's got one PCI slot left which I want to plop another Voodoo2 into for a vintage SLI setup.

All that said, both my SE/30 and my 7100 are packed to the gills with even weirder toys. :-)

What do you even do with the OrangePC? I guess all of this is quite obsolete, but to run old windows on it?

Well, mostly I just like the novelty. I have a Radius Rocket 33 (68040) and an OrangePC 290 (Cyrix 5x86) in my 7100/80. It's kinda fun to play with a classic Mac a PPC Mac and a classic PC all in one box. I finally got them to run DOOM II bots against each other.

The OrangePC 660 has an NVIDIA RIVA 128 on it, so I use it to play with old CAD/CAM software sometimes and it's kind of fun (similar to the 7100) to fire up some cross-platform games (e.g. Myth TFL/II, Quake 1/2, etc. and get the Mac side playing against the PC side).

At the end of the day it's all just technological novelty and esoteria, of course.

Or, if you want to do it in the other direction (sometimes this is more convenient), NCSA Telnet for the Mac has a built-in FTP server. I use this to upload files to the Power Mac 7300 directly from this Raptor Talos II.

> some sort of NAS solution that would be compatible with older versions of Mac OS

http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/ :)

You have to run the 2.x series to interoperate with older "classic" Macs. Nearly everything these days packages the 3.x series and thus only works with more recent OS X clients.

That is true for AFP over AppleTalk, yes. Netatalk3 only supports AFP over TCP, but that's fine as far back as System 7 using AppleShare Workstation with MacTCP. System 7.6 and later can use AppleShare Client 3.8.8 with OpenTransport: https://web.archive.org/web/20110418060150/https://support.a...

It's not the protocols that are entirely the problem. It's the authentication mechanisms that also create limitations. I had zero luck getting my 6.0.8 thru 8.6 installs to connect to Netatalk hosts on either my FreeNAS box or my Ubuntu 20.10 workstation until I manually built and installed the old 2.x tree.

FWIW I've had no trouble connecting to the built-in install of netatalk 3.1.8 on my Synology NAS from MacOS 8.1. I can't remember if I had to tweak the config or not.

It's been a few years so I don't remember if I ran into any difficulties or what options I may have changed from default, but I've definitely used it with my Quadra v(._. )v https://i.imgur.com/yjGGN9k.jpg

It's entirely possible I just couldn't get the right mix and config together with 3.x

It just went from fiddly and non-working to braindead easy once I downgraded to 2.x

:shrug:

Netatalk 2.2 will work on a NetBSD server.

unfortunately, file transfer isn't in yet, but it's the next feature I'm working on, probably within a week or two

netatalk is a open source AFP/AppleTalk implementation that I’ve used for years (supports file shares, Time Machine, etc.)

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