from Hacker News

Browsing like it's 1994: Integrating a Mac SE, ImageWriter II into a modern LAN

by blakespot on 9/17/23, 4:20 PM with 55 comments

  • by jdblair on 9/17/23, 5:01 PM

    Localtalk was great, RS-422 is a low-cost long-distance serial transport, and Apple took advantage of that to build networking into the Macintosh. Our computer lab in high school used Farallon PhoneNET transceivers, which made it easy to daisy chain computers using low-cost Category 1 RJ-11 phone wiring.

    In college (Miami University), our computer lab also used PhoneNET (it really simplified wiring) combined with a Cayman Gatorbox to bridge to the campus TCP/IP backbone. By modern standards, painfully slow, but in 1992 the whole university was connected over a single 56K uplink to Columbus, so we hardly noticed.

    I have fond memories of playing Spectre with networked opponents over LocalTalk.

    To get online from our dorm rooms or offcampus, the only option was dial-up to the university phonebank, a 2400 baud terminal. Using the LocalTalk connection from a lab was much more responsive.

  • by comex on 9/18/23, 1:51 AM

    FYI for the author:

    > Chrome was built from scratch by Google, while Safari was originally derived from the KDE project's Konqueror browser engine, KHTML.

    This isn’t correct. Chrome’s engine, Blink, was forked in 2013 from WebKit, the engine used by Safari which was itself forked from KHTML.

  • by trimbo on 9/17/23, 5:04 PM

    > I attempted to use Netscape Navigator and iCab based on the list from here to no avail, Netscape Navigator crashed and iCab reported that it didn't have enough memory

    Well the SE is like 1986 technology that predates the web. NCSA Mosaic came out in 1993.

    I can't find the min spec for Mac Mosaic 1.x other than "System 7" but you could give it a try. Even Mosaic would have been mostly targeting Macs in wide deployment at the time. Those would be more like Mac II, Centris and Quadra machines with 68030s or 68040s with more RAM and built-in HDDs.

    Fun project!

  • by spacecadet on 9/17/23, 4:58 PM

    Nice write up! I also have a Mac SE, but I found an Asente Ethernet card and installed that. Then ran ethernet to a small custom pcb that bridges to wireless, all tucked inside the original case.

    PS, Then run this on a rpi or something, kudos to this repo for dialing back the entire web :) https://github.com/tghw/macproxy

  • by johnklos on 9/17/23, 7:53 PM

    This is awesome. I still keep around an ImageWriter II I found in a dumpster two decades ago because they're incredibly reliable and will print no matter what. Ribbons are plentiful and cheap, the printer doesn't care about the kind of paper, and even detailed QR codes and barcodes work fine if you blow them up a bit.

    But what's better than a printer that can work with almost any computer made in the last four decades?

    I just recently got a LocalTalk card for my ImageWriter II, and between this article and a recent one about custom ROMs for Macs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37471321), I'm considering having a dedicated m68k machine that can bridge AppleTalk on ethernet with LocalTalk.

    Good article!

  • by firecall on 9/18/23, 12:05 AM

    Wow, AsanteTalk!

    Thats a name I havent heard in a long time!

    Which reminds me, I was luck enough to be at one of the last pre-Jobs / transitional era Apple TechTalks in London for dealers. They showed new Stylewriters I recall, which never got released!

    Jobs killed all the printers before they shipped, and rightly so!

  • by eschneider on 9/17/23, 5:31 PM

    Without a doubt, Microsoft Word for Mac v5.1 is the best version of word, barn none.

  • by donatj on 9/18/23, 12:37 AM

    I seem to recall my school district in the early-to-mid 90's having something like this set up with the very early Macintoshes. The Local Talk cable reminded me of times long forgotten. We could print to any printer in the district from the Chooser.

    I made very good use of this wasting paper around the district.

  • by blakespot on 9/17/23, 11:08 PM

    I wonder if a Mac Plus could do this equally well. I am guessing it can. Would be fun to print from the Mac Studio through the Plus to the Imagewriter II.

  • by stockerta on 9/17/23, 6:08 PM

    Is the site itself hosted on a Mac SE? It's slow as hell.