Getting software onto my new PowerBook Duo 280c

[Thomas Harte]

I have recently acquired a PowerBook Duo 280c with an Apple Mini Dock, a Micro Dock and a floppy drive. I also have an AsanteTalk, which acts as a physical bridge between RJ45 ethernet and LocalTalk networks. It's running Mac OS 7.6.1.

On my desktop is a MacBook Pro Core Duo with OS X v10.6, an internet connection and a USB floppy drive.

I have a stack of System 7 software, but mostly on CD. There also still seems to be a lot hanging around the Internet.

What I want to do is get software onto the Duo. I know nothing whatsoever technical about the Classic OS or LocalTalk. I am aware that a USB floppy drive won't read traditional Mac formatted disks, though OS 7.6.1 seems to have some level of support for DOS floppies.

So, I guess:

• is there any way to set up networked file sharing between these two machines?
• can I transfer software on PC formatted floppy (you know, if I somehow manage to find a floppy), or will that break resource forks, etc?
• are there any other options I haven't thought of?

The Mini Dock should have a SCSI port as far as I can tell from the Internet, but doesn't seem to have an obvious one — my complete knowledge of SCSI being that the connectors look like PC parallel printer ports. Does it possibly have some other sort of connector?

 

[jodelli]

The SCSI interface on a Duo dock is an HDI 30, which is a square socket around the size of a sugar cube. You'd need a converter cable to hook up to a normal external SCSI cable.

From a 520c I could use another adapter from AAUI 15 to a crossover ethernet cable that could access CDs or files from another Mac using 8.0 or 9 or even Classic mode but the Duo dock that I've seen doesn't support that.

It a long time ago now so YMMV.

 

[Thomas Harte]

Self follow-up: two reasonable options seem to exist.

The PowerBook Duo supports SCSI Disk Mode when used with the Mini Dock. So in principle I think I could obtain the correct cabling and a USB SCSI interface and directly dump files onto the PowerBook from my MacBook. Since the PowerBook is on 7.6.1 and the MacBook on 10.6, I'd need either to downgrade my MacBook to 10.5 or to upgrade my PowerBook to 8.1 since 10.6 doesn't write to HFS and 8.1 introduces HFS+. Also, USB SCSI interfaces seem to be quite expensive nowadays.

Alternatively, I could get a USB to serial interface and connect the two machines up for zmodemy NULL serial transfers. Per at least one post I've found on the Internet, if I can get FreePPP onto the PowerBook then I can use the PPP daemon built into OS X and even bridge 7.6.1 onto the Internet, allowing it to fetch as many files as it wants or to FTP onto my Pro. USB serial interfaces seem to be a lot more available than USB SCSI, but this doesn't solve the original problem of getting some software onto the machine.

 

[WardC]

You can setup AppleShare with a serial cable and install software this way. SHare the CD-ROM drive over the network and install your software onto the Duo over the serial cable via AppleShare with the chooser. This is pretty slow though and you will have to be patient.