Networking the Macintosh SE - Can we drag files from 1989 into the current day?

[@andrewloranger]

Little late to the party as the KZbin gods only recommended this video to me 2 years after you uploaded it. I thought this was an excellent video showing the adventure of setting up a bridge machine for transferring files through time and space! Off to peruse some more of your channel - Thanks!

[@TheBasementChannel]

Better late than never huh? I’ve got a much more advanced networking setup now, but have yet to make a video about it. Hope you enjoy the other content, it’s a bit of a mixed bag!

[@petebeech2006]

Really cool video. I love the vintage macs. I had an LCII. Wish I’d kept it. Great video man, nicely presented too. Thanks for the enjoyable watch

[@TheBasementChannel]

Yes hindsight is 20/20, I wish I kept all of my old gear. Thanks for the encouraging comment!

[@arcadesy]

I recently got a BlueSCSI for backing up my Mac, worked a treat. But now I'm thinking I might just use it as the main hard disc.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Good idea! I’ve got one in the mail, waiting for it to arrive 😴

[@brokenelectronics3665]

well done, that was fun to watch. My suggestion concerning getting these machines talking, is to have a bridge machine, something that will be able to dual boot Ma OS 9 and Mac OS X, Jaguar or higher. The OS 9 install will be able to talk to any classic Mac OS version, as well as Cheetah and Puma. Puma to Jaguar is the breaking point in networking protocols. Keep the videos coming, I really enjoy them.

[@TheBasementChannel]

I’m thinking the tiBook might serve this purpose, dual boots 9.2 and 10.x (can’t remember right now which one!) thanks for the tip, helpful advice!😊

[@brokenelectronics3665]

@@TheBasementChannel You are most welcome! I was thinking the same thing. A titanium PowerBook should be able to run Tiger with no issues at all.

[@IrishObyrne]

I’ve just finished restoring an 1988 Macintosh SE from Germany that’s been sitting in attic storage for 35 years. Recapped, retrobrighted and scsi2sd. Was a very fun and rewarding adventure. Just now trying to find a way to clone the original 20mb HD to an SD card (for nostalgia sake…to retain a copy as my late mother had left it.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Wow, sounds like a very rewarding project!

[@IrishObyrne]

@@TheBasementChannel Thanks, It was. We were living in Germany in 80s/90s (Military Family). My mother ran a Latch Key program for the military children. She had bought the Macintosh for the Kids to learn. The Army than gave her $ to build a proper computer lab. So, she purchase several Macintosh se and printers. Really prided herself in having created it for the kids. This was the one that she herself had purchased. It still has all of the kids names, folders and projects on it from when we left Germany in 92. I had thought it was trashed decades ago. She was unfortunately killed a couple of years ago. And About 3 months ago It was found in storage and offered to me. Thanks

[@TheBasementChannel]

Thanks for sharing that story. I love the stories that come out of Mac ownership. They seemed to be owned by the most interesting people.

[@cleverlyblonde]

Note that if you get the AppleTalk LocalTalk adapters, those use the printer port. Also for DIN ports the Mac should be turned off when connecting or disconnecting the cables.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Good advice, thanks for sharing!

[@sbrazenor2]

Data migration got so much easier when you could use Apple's Firewire Target Disk Mode feature. (Basically the whole computer becomes a glorified hard drive chassis.) There are newer, faster options like Thunderbolt, obviously - but Firewire was where it started to get reasonable for speed.

[@TheBasementChannel]

TDM is such a handy feature for the PowerPC era (and later!) machines! I’ve never tried SCSI Disk Mode for the 100 series laptops, I believe you need a special SCSI cable for it to work.

[@LaurentHoornaert]

Great video!

[@TheBasementChannel]

Thank you!!

[@Austin_Boath]

Very interesting. I was surprised when my G3 connected to the internet.

[@TheBasementChannel]

These old machines are full of surprises! 😆

[@HaveYouTriedGuillotines]

Linux has a HFS driver. With a bit of effort, it should be possible to create Macintosh disks on linux with whatever files you need to get something like networking running.

[@TheBasementChannel]

You lost me at “a bit of effort” 😆

[@RetrogradeScene]

You should make a video doing a file pass the parcel using one from every generation!! You weren't far off.

[@TheBasementChannel]

🤔 this video is already pretty niche, don’t want to push my luck 😂 we’ll see how many views it picks up 💁‍♂️

[@thecanadiangrill1715]

Hi there, like the video very much and thank you. I just had couple of questions. The Mac SE with dual floppy drives I don't think came with an internal hard drive. At least as far as I'm aware of. Is yours modified? Next, I never knew that you could directly network older Macs with a simple serial cable. l thought you would need those Apple LocalTalk adapters on each machine to successfully communicate between two or more older Macs. Did this really work? Thanks, Jay.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Hi Jay! Yes my SE has been modified. The hard drive (if fitted) is usually in the place of one of the floppy drives. Mine sits in a bracket above the FDD, it’s quite a tight fit. And also yes, the Macintosh had built in networking from the start! The LocalTalk adapter would just convert the serial connection to a phone jack or coax for longer runs of to be part of a multi computer network. But peer to peer networking using AppleShare works over a serial cable. You just select in Chooser what is on the printer port. Thanks for the great comment!!

[@thecanadiangrill1715]

@@TheBasementChannel Wow thanks! I didn't know this until now! I have several old Macs and always thought that a bridge computer is what I needed. In my case, I have the last of the beige G3's. Thanks so much for this info, I'm going to try it out!

[@RichsRandomRetroReviews]

Great video as always. I use a bridge machine between my old 68K and PPC Mac's to talk to my current 2017 MacBook Pro running Big Sur. It's a 1st generation Intel Mac mini that's running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8. It's the oldest version of OS X I can connect to from Big Sur and and I can connect to it from all my old machines. (Tiger is just too old). So far I've tested System 7.1, 7.5.3, Mac OS 8, Mac OS 8.1, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 9.2.2. The only annoying thing about it is it doesn't show up in the Chooser. You have to click the button that says IP address and enter it's IP address there. Aside from that it works without issue. I was planning on doing a video to explain how I get files on and off my old machines as I have several options. For getting files on to old machines, I have USB floppy to floppy, CD-ROM, SCSI Zip (to USB Zip) and Ethernet. To get files off, I have floppy to USB floppy, SCSI Zip (to USB Zip) and ethernet.

[@TheBasementChannel]

That’s some good info there! I wanted to do the IP thing in chooser, but I think my version was too old? Or I didn’t have the right extension.

[@Mac84]

@@TheBasementChannel Yes, the "IP address" option will only show up if you have OpenTransport (like version 1.3) installed and the AppleShare Client update installed. This page has helpful downloads www.applefool.com/se30/. This will also enable System 7.5 / 7.6 Macs to mount Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" volumes.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Sorry Steve just found your comment. For some reason KZbin flagged it “for review” 🤔😆

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi , looks like youtube also dropped this in my feed 2 years to late ( and i have not searched Macintosh on youtube for min 2 months ) Around 200-2005 i have for the kids a Macintosh 2 LC and a Performa 575 ??? it was a all in one with cdrom - not sure if it had a zip drive or the zip was a external one Both were networked as some games were moved from one to the other, plus any homework was saved in word or excel and apple talk to the 575 then to zip disk, the the zip disk went into the Pentium 2 Gateway 2000 that came with factory installed zip disk - i still have that machine Mac SE 30 was the first to be able to write to IBM 1/44 formated floppy I have plenty experience with retro PC's, i have used serial and laplink on serial or parallel to backup vintage small hard drives, i think 20 meg = 30 to 40 minutes of serial speed copying I am not sure but i believe with most macs you can just reinstall the OS and a large percentage of programs will work by just file dragging the folder from one mac to another , some copyright programs may not work This was quite enjoyable to watch There is a PC / DOS project that runs well on PC it is called MTVP , i dont know if it is capable to talk to a macintosh serial network - i do have it installed on a 386 - but those machines can run windows 3.11 and talk one way to windows 10 anyway ( it was 2 way but in 2017-2018 windows 10 had some updated and abandoned some older unsecure protocols, so windows 3.11 can see the network shared on win 10 but cannot touch the files, but from the win 10 you can access the win3.1 folder and access / add / delete files 100% ) I though mac kermit was a thing during the motorola and PPC era Do those The Old Net's Serial WiFi Modem Emulator's connect to FTP or router i cant recall, same wit those serial to wife adapters The only mac's i have now are Ibook G4 10.4 or 10.5 ) , macbook Core2Duo ( 10.6 ) , imac Core2duo (10.6) so they are older but not vintage et - i miss the Macintosh 2 LC and a Performa 575 as i had to get rind of them to make way for the G4 laptop ( wifes orders ) and to think i sold them with OEM install floppy / cd's zip drive, printer / MS office / Clarris works everything for $40 Regards George

[@TheBasementChannel]

Thanks for the comment and story George, it’s always fun to reminisce.

[@michaelhill6453]

Good vid. Was the second floppy broken? You seemed to be doing some unnecessary disc swapping.

[@TheBasementChannel]

I enjoy the exercise

[@michaelhill6453]

@@TheBasementChannel I'd have my arm in a sling.

[@werehyenataur]

Try it now Macnet was reborn last month

[@CarlCerecke]

Bring back the beard!

[@TheBasementChannel]

That’s the problem when recording a video spans several days 😂

[@JulienMR]

And today you would plug a DB25 bluescsi and it would take 2 minutes.

[@TheBasementChannel]

We truly live in an age of wonder

[@outbackchillin5628]

I've just bought my 1st ever apple computer .. the eMac , this weekend .. so I guess I have all this to come , although , I "think" I can just get an AirPort ? I've always had PC's , I liked DOS , never liked windows , I run linux now

[@TheBasementChannel]

Networking the eMac will be super simple! If you have an airport card installed then just join the wifi, or you can use the built in Ethernet. Get Ten4Fox to browse the web. You can boot the eMac in “target disk mode” and it acts like a giant external hard drive connected via thunderbolt.

[@outbackchillin5628]

@@TheBasementChannel thanks .. I'll read this again when I set it up ... just broke my collar bone ! a few weeks ago doh!!! so can't lift anything at the moment . Wifey had to lift this one in to the car ! :-)

[@destrierofdark_]

Depending on the Mac, can also perhaps upgrade to Leopard. There is a convoluted way to do it over USB that'll take you eight hours to do the install (ambience to sleep to?) but it works.

[@TheOldNet]

Hey, I happen to make/sell two products that can help you here. I make WIFI modems emulators and I make BlueSCSI to SD adapters. I used the BlueSCSI recently to do a full backup of my SE 30 and my LC 575!

[@TheBasementChannel]

Sounds interesting, I’ll have to check it out 👍👍

[@jaroslavpsenicka]

I'd be rather interested to see the 540c laptop being connected to the ethernet.

[@TheBasementChannel]

What a great idea! I’ll have to have a look into this.

[@HumphreyMurray]

Ha ha “this has no useful purpose apart from a bit of fun” - even though I only play with modern stuff, I should do more “no useful purpose” things 👍

[@TheBasementChannel]

They certainly are fun!