Sunday, October 17, 2021

Additions to my Vintage AppleTalk Network

During the last year I have added aa Macintosh Color Classic II, a Macintosh Plus, and an Apple Stylewriter II printer to my home network. The computers both have serial ports and could be connected to my existing AppleTalk network using PhoneNet connectors. The Color Classic II has an Ethernet card installed as well and so due to limited desk space I decided to retire the rather bulky PowerMac 5400/120 in favor of using the Color Classic II as my bridge Mac. With an Apple external SCSI CD-ROM drive connected to its SCSI port, the Color Classic II is almost as capable as the PM 5400, though not as fast and with reduced screen size and sound. The Color Classic II has Mac System 7.5.5 installed which is sufficient to run Local File Sharing, the LocalTalk Bridge, and act as the host for the StyleWriter II printer with "GrayShare" which allows all of the other vintage Macs to print to it over the network. Only my Apple IIGS is unable to print since Apple never released StyleWriter II drivers for the IIGS or allowed printing from a IIGS over AppleTalk except to networked ImageWriter II or Laserwriter printers.