[HN Gopher] A Global AppleTalk Network: Pushing AppleTalk Across...
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A Global AppleTalk Network: Pushing AppleTalk Across the Internet
Author : goranmoomin
Score : 54 points
Date : 2024-03-04 11:42 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (biosrhythm.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (biosrhythm.com)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| How about a global Corvus network? Or a global WangNet network?
|
| Some things just died, as is the way of all flesh.
| johnklos wrote:
| There are many, many more Macs than Wangs and Corvus systems.
|
| The people who don't learn from the past are usually the people
| who aren't all that interested in learning how things work,
| learning the lessons people and companies made in the past, and
| applying those lessons to today and the future. I personally
| think this is neat!
|
| Old technology can still be quite useful. I still use an
| ancient ImageWriter II because new printers suck, and having
| more options to use old hardware is always a good thing.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > The people who don't learn from the past are usually the
| people who aren't all that interested in learning how things
| work, learning the lessons people and companies made in the
| past, and applying those lessons to today and the future.
|
| No, actually, I do know how things work. The problem for you
| is that the Internet is there now and the whole world is on
| it, to a first approximation.
|
| Knowing what the Internet designers did wrong (btw, the
| internet-history mailing list does this subject regularly)
| doesn't help us much, because we're not going to be doing it
| again.
|
| As for old hardware: right on. If it works, keep using it.
| Palomides wrote:
| there's a global DECNet community still going (HECNet):
| http://mim.stupi.net/hecnet.htm
| cfr2023 wrote:
| Not sure of the tone of this post, does the idea of a bunch of
| enthusiasts having fun with old computer hardware actually
| upset you? If so, do you feel similarly about hobbyists that
| tinker with things like old cars, old clocks, old musical
| instruments...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > does the idea of a bunch of enthusiasts having fun with old
| computer hardware actually upset you?
|
| You said "hardware." I specifically gave thumbs-up to
| hardware. Did you not read that?
|
| As for reinventing basic networking: no, it's not upsetting,
| but it IS self-limiting. The networks of the future will
| probably require brand-new thinking, not resurrected old
| stuff.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the reasoning at the time was that the protocols are "too chatty"
| .. they repeat msgs for discovery and also for transaction
| completeness more so than the carefully built TCP/IP in the 90s.
|
| There is nothing wrong with most of the stack, if you go back
| before OpenTransport (a rewrite, didn't go far, imperfect)
| mannyv wrote:
| The reason AppleTalk was chatty was to make discovery easier.
| Unlike the corporate solutions, AT was peer-to-peer. Ut who are
| your peers? Uh, well, hmm.
|
| That was also when networking was new, and chatty on thinnet
| meant lower bandwidth.
|
| To be honest, i doubt the chatty protocols really impacted
| anything...except that "network administrators" didn't like the
| idea of packets ie: they wanted a clean wire. This might have
| been due to the phone company origins of networking people.
|
| Oh, and maybe the chattiness fired up those uucp links?
|
| The world now is totally different. Even on my home network
| there's tons of crosstalk.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > To be honest, i doubt the chatty protocols really impacted
| anything...
|
| The "chattiness" of AppleTalk was a significant issue when it
| was running over a shared 115.2 kBaud serial line
| (LocalTalk).
| just_steve_h wrote:
| I love this! Reminds me of the campus network at Harvard. Around
| 1994-95 we had multiple zones, but only spotty understanding of
| networks by most users. I had a blast one day mocking up what
| looked like a Mac on-screen error message which said "Sorry, this
| Document could not be printed," which I then printed on randomly-
| chosen printers across the University. Good times!
| bombcar wrote:
| It was a few years later, but we had some fun when we realized
| you could communicate with Laserjet printers and change what
| they said on the display.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| you would go to prison for that now
| LordGrey wrote:
| I'm moving in a few weeks and just found new homes for my stash
| of 30+ year old Macs, CRTs, and LaserWriters.
|
| Now I want it all back so I can go play....
| morphle wrote:
| Please, can you tell me where?
|
| I need to find a home for my 40 year old Macs (almost every
| model), CRTs, cables, etc.
| latchkey wrote:
| Start here? https://computerhistory.org/
| LordGrey wrote:
| I found homes via Mastadon! I posted what I had, including
| pictures, and added tags like #vintageapple, #retroapple, and
| #retrocomputing.
|
| YMMV depending on where you live, but I'm sure you will get
| some positive responses.
| latchkey wrote:
| Wow, this brings back memories. Back in 1991, I was freshly into
| a cal state college in the Los Angeles area. We had access to the
| entire cal state AppleTalk network, which included a bunch of
| high schools as well. That AppleTalk zone list had hundreds of
| networks in it all up and down California.
|
| Around 1992/93, I started working for a department in school that
| had it's own budget and lots of money. The head of the department
| loved Apple. I built out Mac labs and networking and had us
| hooked onto all of this.
|
| It was a bit of this whole hidden world and quite fun in the pre-
| internet explosion days. Mind you, this was all back before
| Windows even had a native tcp/ip stack, so it felt even more us
| vs. them isolated.
| api wrote:
| You can do this with ZeroTier too, which can emulate L2 Ethernet
| and carry AppleTalk, IPX, and lots of other old and unusual
| protocols. It can be bridged to physical networks to connect old
| devices like this.
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(page generated 2024-03-06 23:00 UTC)