MacIP.net

MacIP protocol

MacIPRpi

MacIPRpi. The MacIPpi concept for Raspberry Pi.

Latest release Stable Release 5.02

MacIP.net gives you a MacIP gateway out of the box on a Raspberry Pi thanks to the Linux port of macipgw done by Stefan Bethke. And the MacIPRpi is loaded with software to get you going with file sharing with almost any computer. New or old. Macintosh or non Macintosh.

Picture: MacIPRpi at work for a MacIP session in BaseliskII emulator

You can connect Macintosh computers over LocalTalk with the use of cabling between the printer ports. On this kind of network it is not possible to ‘speak’ TCP/IP to the Internet right away. To ‘speak’ TCP/IP from a LocalTalk network to a TCPnetwork, like the Internet, it is necessary to encapsulate Internet Protocol (IP) packets within the AppleTalk DDP protocol. To do this right you need a piece of hardware or software to do this. This device will ‘unpack’ tthe TCP/IP packages and send them to other TCP/IP networks.
In the old days we had router devices like a FastPath to do this. Now a combination of a LocalTalk bridge and a MacIPRpi can do the trick.

Their are two types of LocalTalk bridges you can use:

If you have a LocalTalk bridge you can use the MacIPRpi. If you don’t have one you can use an emulator like BasiliskII or SheepShaver to play around.

So now a new member of MacIP.net solutions is for for Raspberry Pi.
(If you really want to have a dead cheap device look at my solution for the Orange Pi ($9.99) )

Download the image for a Raspberry Pi from:

https://cdn.macip.net/MacIPRpi-5.02.img (3.8G)
MD5 hash: fd41810d39e7bd0c5f9b216508d786c9

or the compact 7zipped version:

https://cdn.macip.net/MacIPRpi-5.02.img.7z (1.1 G)
MD5 hash: d75a900124ac506c8f319f9cc412d87e

To unzip use 7Zip. Do not try to load the 7z version on the SD card.

I tested myself on a Raspberry Pi B3+. It is also tested and working on a Raspberry Pi 4. (Would be nice to find out on which types the image also works)

Use dd on Linux systems (and MacOSX) to put the image on the SD disk.
This will be a command like this:

dd if=MacIPRpi-5.02.img|pv|dd of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

On a Linux/Unix/MacOSX system you can check the name of the SD card with the command:

 dmesg

On Mac/Linux/Windows Etcher or on Windows only you can use a tool like Win32DiskImager (this tool is deprecated…but sometimes people work with it). Etcher is THE tool!

Connect you MacIPRpi to your network with a network cable. Do not try to connect the MacIPRpi with wifi. No Appletalk over WIFI! Also don’t try to connect it directly to a Macintosh with some kind of cabling trick… Just treat it as one of you home computers and give it a cable on your local network.

It will get an IP address from your (home) router if you power it on. After a few minutes it will be ready. To be sure let it run for 5 minutes. Take this time because the appletalk daemon needs some time to settle. It is ready when the red led starts blinking. Even no need to connect a monitor.

If you want you can login from your Macintosh with Telnet or SSH. On your old Macintosh with MacIP configured you can access it by IP address 172.16.2.1.
If you want to connect from a Mac OSX, Windows or Linux machine you can connect to macippi.local. If you want to login username is: macipgw and password: macipgw

You can become root by entering

$sudo -i

and password macipgw

What does the MacIPRpi gives you?

  • You can now surf the Internet out of the box with a LocalTalk only Macintosh. Or use AppleTalk (MacIP) in your emulator.
    Use the IP information as in this image:



    credits to: https://github.com/jasonking3/macipgw
  • Newest version of the Web Rendering Proxy on port 8080.
    http://macippi.local:8080/ or on MacIP http://gw.macip.net:8080
    Just visit the MacIPRpi with your old browser and see internet pages as images. Remember that is now more ‘a browser in a browser’ then a proxy. Don’t use it as proxy in your browsers settings.





    credits to: https://github.com/tenox7/wrp
  • Full file sharing.

    – For old school Macintosh 512k, Plus, SE, etc. and System 7, 8, 9 Macs
    – MacOS X
    – Windows
    – Linux
    – iPhone
    – iPad
    – Android
    You can login as Guest.

    Also anonymous FTP is supported.
    You will always land in the same map and can share files between different computers and operating systems.

    Thanks to: Netatalk 2.2.5, Samba
    http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/
    https://www.samba.org/

MacIPRpi seen from a Windows machine

MacIPRpi seen from an Apple MacBook

MacIPRpi seen from a iPhone

For ‘power users’ who want to do more with a MacIPRpi.

  • It is a full usable Linux machine. LXDE as window manager. You can connect to it with X2go or RDP. Or add a monitor.
  • You can use SheepShaver and BasiliskII Macintosh emulators. Sheepsaver executable on board and BasiliskII has to be compiled. Have a look at /opt/basiliskII
  • Gparted for disk management
  • Rpi monitor on http://macippi.local:8888/
  • sshd started at boot. You can login with ssh. User macipgw can login with ssh. Password is also macipgw. If you like to be root login as root with password macipgw or do a sudo su and enter the macipgw user password: macipgw
  • pi user password is raspberry
  • macipgw user password is macipgw
  • root password is macipgw
  • telnetd started at boot. You can login (as user pi, macipgw or even root) with telnet.
  • Host name resolution. You can point to gw.macip.net and it is resolved as 172.16.2.1 and you can point to mac04.macip.net as your Macintosh with IP address 172.16.2.4.
  • Dynamic motd . You see a lot of information, like all the Apple/Macintosh and AppleTalk devices in your network
  • Small image, automatic resize to the max of your SD card on first boot. But works also on a 4GB SD card and leaves more then 400MB free space. That is the equivalent of twenty HD20 disks…
  • Installed nmap for testing
  • Installed aecho for testing
  • Installed nbplkup for finding AppleTalk devices
  • Installed tcpdump for listening to atalk packages.
    (tcpdump -i eth0 atalk)
  • Some more old services can start up, like tftpd, finger, daytime. Nice for testing old MacTCP applications. See /etc/inetd.conf
  • For ftp login with the macipgw account with password macipgw. Or anonymous login with user anonymous and any password
  • Web server on port 80 so you can test a web browser. With MacIP point it to http://172.16.2.1 and you will see a historic web page based on the first web site of CERN.
    See http://info.cern.ch – home of the first website
  • Lynx web browser. The text only web browser so you can surf the web like in the old days.
  • Elinks web browser. The text only web browser so you can surf the web like in the old days.
  • You can find more information about macipgw and the linux port on: https://github.com/zero2sixd/macipgw
  • Raspbian OS with kernel 5.10.17-v7+
  • raspi-config for advanced configuration
  • Avahi zeroconf in place. You can find it on your network with DNS: macippi.local
  • Add any package you want to add. Use apt install .. or apt-get install .. to install and apt-cache search … to find packages

If you have feedback or tips you can reach me at info (at) macip.net or at the 68kmla forum: https://68kmla.org/forums/profile/894-mactjaap/

Comments are closed.