The Neither Net adapter help with Mac Plus

[Zparras]

Hi Everyone,

I recently bought the Neither Net adapter from Joe's Computer museum (along with a BlueSCSI). The BlueSCSI works great but I'm not having any luck making a network connection between the Neither Net my Macintosh Plus.

The Neither Net adapter lets one connect an ethernet cable to the Mac Plus printer serial port and use the Macintosh built in Local Talk network.

NeitherNet Adapter - Joe's Computer Museum

NeitherNet is a PhoneNet-style adapter. It allows you to re-create PhoneNet LocalTalk networks for your vintage Macs without all the expense of finding an original adapter on some auction site.

jcm-1.com

My Mac Plus has 4mb of Ram and I've tested it with System 6.08, 7.1 and 7.5. I'm trying to connect it to my iBook G4 (Power PC) running OS 9.2. I've seen 2 videos by Joe and by Adrian Black and followed the instructions with no luck.

If someone has experience with this adapter I've love to get some advice, on best OS to use, type of Ethernet cable etc.

Thank you in advance,

 

[Nycturne]

I guess the question is: how are you trying to use it?

The iBook G4 doesn't support LocalTalk, as the last Mac to do so natively was the beige PowerMac G3. NeitherNet isn't an Ethernet adapter either. So I'm not sure how these two devices would be able to talk to each other, because they would be trying to speak two different "languages" over the same cable.

 

[robin-fo]

Could you describe your hardware setup in detail? As indicated in the video you mention, you still need a LocalTalk bridge (Mac with both EtherNet and LocalTalk or a dedicated device) to bridge your NeitherNet to Ethernet.

 

[eric]

Seems you asked the same question here and got an answer - https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/help-with-neither-net-adapter-and-mac-plus.1250733/

Mac Plus -> neithernet -> rj45 cable -> neithernet -> [any other mac with serial and localtalk bridge] -> [tcp/ip network]-> powerbook g4

Neithernet is just an phonenet adapter with RJ45 instead of RJ11 - (who has RJ11 cables around these days.) Nothing else changes when building a localtalk network.

 

[Zparras]

My hardware setup is as follows:

Macintosh Plus 4mb running OS 7.5
iBook G4 Power PC running OS 9.2

I connected the NeitherNet adapter to the printer port and with an ethernet cable to the ethernet port on the iBook G4. I installed LocalTalk Bridge 2.1 on the iBook G4. I also configured a shared directory, setup a user name and a user group on both machines. I followed Adrian Black's video on how to configure AppleTalk on 2 computers

I understand the NeitherNet adapter replaces the LocalTalk cables with ethernet cables and is not meant to connect to an ethernet network.

I also understand from Joe's video I don't need a hardware bridge such as Asante Ethernet to localTalk Bridge. I may have misunderstood that point that I can connect two Apple computers that use AppleTalk with the NeitherNet adapter and ethernet cable.

This is my first foray into AppleTalk and I have been enjoying learning about it. When I saw the NeitherNet adapter I thought it would be a good experiment to try and connect my Macintosh Plus to a more modern computer with AppleTalk.

I did ask the same question on VFC Forum and no one who responded had any experience using the NeitherNet adapter, therefore I reposted my question here hoping someone had some direct experience using the NeitherNet adapter. After re-reading the responses I realize I misunderstood how the NeitherNet works. It was really out to frustration that I repeated my question on this post. I apologize if I wasted everyone's time, my intention is not to be disrespectful to members of the retro computer community only to learn from your experience. If the forum moderator wants to delete my post, I completely understand. Thank you for help. Regards,

 

[robin-fo]

Although NeitherNet uses the same cabling as Ethernet, it is completely incompatible with it. So the Ethernet port in your iBook has no clue what to do with the signals it receives from your Mac Plus. What you need is an intermediate Mac which has both an Ethernet and a LocalTalk port. You connect your Mac Plus to the Printer Port of the intermediate Mac using NeitherNet (or just a standard serial/printer cable) and then connect the iBook to the intermediate Mac using normal Ethernet. LocalTalk bridge needs to run on the intermediate Mac, not the iBook. Suitable intermediate Macs are for example an 68k Mac with Ethernet Card or Built-in AAUI Ethernet or any beige PowerPC Macintosh.

 

[Nycturne]

I do get how this can be confusing for those who aren’t tech savvy enough with networking. Especially when we talk about Ethernet (the cable) and Ethernet (the network protocol). EtherTalk is a way to pass AppleTalk over Ethernet (the protocol) networks. So you have layering like this: RJ-45 Cable > Ethernet > AppleTalk. But LocalTalk was a specific way to do AppleTalk over the printer serial ports of Early Macs, and so it layers differently: Cable > LocalTalk > AppleTalk. Apple produced their own LocalTalk cables and 3-way splitters, but Farallon also produced 3-way splitters that used phone cables instead. NeitherNet are fundamentally PhoneNet-style 3-way splitters, but use RJ-45 to carry the LocalTalk signals instead of RJ-11 or Apple’s DIN cables.

This isn’t a bad question IMO, it’s how we learn. That said, someone in the other thread has a good point, you were lucky you didn’t try to plug into a switch that provides power over Ethernet, as that could have done some damage.