Is there anyone left here that could help me with a couple questions about this ancient operating system I have to support?

We have a Strippit 1000/20 turret punch press in our shop. It uses a Power Macintosh 7200/120 as its control. For a computer that's been in a hot/humid factory since 1997, it's held up pretty well.... until recently.

At one point a few years ago, I installed NCSA Telnet on this Macintosh. It has an FTP server included, so we could send programs over ethernet rather than floppies being shuffled around the shop. It worked great, but Strippit re-imaged the Macintosh during a service call last year. Since then, I have been unable to get ethernet working again. So, we've been using floppies since.

First Question: Is there any trick to getting TCP/IP working in System 7.5.3? I seem to have it enabled and I assigned the computer an IP, but I can't ping it. I also have no way (that I know of) of pinging some other machine from the Macintosh. Is there maybe an extension disabled? What would be the name of it?

Second Question: I need Stuffit for this vintage of Macinstosh. If anyone can point me to a copy that will install from a floppy disk, that would be helpful. Please note that I would have to put it on a floppy from a Windows machine, so it would have to be installable from a DOS formatted floppy. The Power Mac can read DOS disks, but I don't know if things can be installed from such a disk.

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The Power Mac 7200/120 is what came with the Strippit, and what's officially supported. As you can imagine, finding decent examples of this model is getting difficult. I would like to have some spares around ready to be swapped in. I have a 7200/90 and 7300/180 which should be usable. Both are currently running 7.5.x and I actually have install media for each computer (7.5.2 and 7.5.5). Currently, these computers are running a stock OS install after I fiddled with them. However, getting them to talk to the Strippit isn't quite working right.

The Strippit communicates with the Mac over a serial link plugged into the 7200's modem port and a full-length PCI card. The PCI card portion seems to work fine. The serial does not.

Question Three: Is there somewhere in OS 7.5 that specifies the parameters of the serial ports? One has a telephone/modem icon on the back, and one has a printer icon. How the hell does the OS determine which port is which? Does COM1-like nomenclature exist in this old Mac OS world?

Question Four: Suppose I just decided to make an image of the 7200/120's (7.5.3) hard drive. I imagine it would restore to the 7200/90 without any problem since minimum OS on the /90 is 7.5.2. But what about the 7300/180? Its minimum OS is 7.5.5. If I put a lesser version on that machine, would it just run in a degraded way, or not at all?

Question Five: Before I (re-)invest in some USB to SCSI adapters, is there any reason why something like Acronis True Image wouldn't be able to backup and restore these machines? I don't know if the filesystem on 7.5.x is significantly different than the current Mac OS filesystem. Is there a better utility for this task? I have Mac OS X computers if that has better tools available.

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Thanks in advance. We also have a Strippit 1000/20 XP which uses a Windows 95 computer as its control. As you can imagine, getting any of this stuff done on that computer is a piece of cake. I wish we just had two of those rather than this silly Mac.

Mm.. can't help with stuffit -- the copy I have is about 7MB.

Would you consider upgrading the OS to OS9?
Most apps should still be fine with that,
and it's much less drastic than OS/X.

I would be interested in trying this setup with Mac OS 8 or 9 if the TCP/IP networking is more straight-forward in those releases.

Most people that worked for Strippit when this was developed have left. So, if you ask Strippit if you can use a different model of PowerMac, their answer is "no." It's simply because they only have documentation that says their software is meant to be installed on OS 7.5.3 on a 7200 only.

I've been focusing on OS 7.5.x-era machines just to try and make things as similar as possible. But, I think it should work on just-about any PowerPC Mac with one PCI slot and serial port.

It's been so long since I messed with System 7, and I never owned a personal machine with it myself. But from what I remember (and Wikipedia says), 7.5 has two things built in that you should probably poke around:

MacTCP - The part that added TCP/IP networking, and maybe this is an optional install. 7.5 was the first version of the OS that included it for free.

Extensions Manager - Extensions are how the classic MacOS added support for anything. I think it's under the Apple Menu somewhere. Perhaps in there will be the needed ethernet and TCP/IP extensions that may be turned off by default.

Also, if you haven't seen this, it may be very handy:
http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html

I can't remember enough about how serial ports worked to answer that part of your question though.

For question 4, odds are the newer 7300/180 won't run anything before 7.5.5, due to lack of driver (extensions) support. You may be able to move the extensions from a 7.5.5 install into a 7.5.2, but honestly, anything 7.5.X should pretty much be the same from a program standpoint.

Jumping to OS 9 may work as Mark suggested, but I can't be as certain. If the setup you have requires some extensions provided by Strippit, they may not work in the newer OS.

The list of extensions that must be enabled (per Strippit documentation) is very short. They are: 7200 Graphics Exceleration, General Controls, Memory, Monitors & Sound, Mouse, and PC Exchange. There are no Strippit-specific extensions.

I would hope that I enabled the proper ethernet extensions, but I will have to double check when the press isn't being used.

Ahh, ok, ignore the MacTCP thing, thats only for non PCI Macs. Open Transport is apparently the way to go, and info here may help:

http://www.vintagemacworld.com/mactcpip.html

I found ZTerm here which would allow me to transfer files over a null modem cable from PC to Mac. This might be good if it's easier to get working than an FTP solution.

I might try and get that working, actually. Does anyone know if I can use this DB9 to DIN8 serial adapter with a DB9 to DB9 null modem cable and just have it work?

I was having a look at this link:
http://www.vintagemacworld.com/mactcpip.html


That might be one of the strangest things I've heard. So, it looks like TCP/IP might be working, I just have to be running a program that uses it.

I'm going to have to test this out another day. Punching metal is more important than my experiments at this time. I also think I found a version of Stuffit that fits on a diskette.

As I recall, most problems with that os boiled down to either extension conflicts or corrupted preference files, or a corrupted pram.

Zapping the pram fixes that problem. It's a boot time key combo. Do it a couple times in a row.

Preferences and extensions each live in a specific directory.

Simply removing all preference files will remove whatever is corrupted . The software will rebuild the preference files as needed. The downside being that you will have to visit all the relevant prefrence dialogs and reset them.

Extension conflicts take more time to resolve.

Also, There is a motherboard battery that may need replacing.

About zapping pram.
http://www.macshare.com/pram.html

According to Apple.

This machine will support OS9.

Thanks for this info, Glenn.

I plan to pick up a couple of those CMOS batteries since each of the three Macs seem to have the same brand on-board. That probably means they've never been replaced.

Speaking of that, is OS 7.5.x Y2K compliant? When I set the date, the year is 12, not 2012. Either way, it doesn't appear to be a real problem.

System 7 was Y2K compliant, as I recall. Macs used a different date algorithm.

Can't really help. I'm more familiar with System 7 Point 3, though frankly it wasn't as good as the first album.

Peter

Well, I can tell you now that the ethernet was working all along. I successfully loaded the NCSA Telnet program to the 7200/120. Once it was open, the Mac responded to ping.

I also put OS 9 on the 7300/180. It's good to have a (slightly more) modern OS that can get on the web, burn CDs and format floppies. In case anyone was wondering, OS X cannot write to or format a floppy. At least not any version within the past few years...

The only thing I have left to do is make an image of the currently-working setup. It turns out that Acronis won't do it and something like Carbon Copy Cloner in OS X won't either due to the older filesystem used in System 7.x. It's possible I can get something going on the OS 9 Mac, but I think my best bet is simply to use 'dd' in Linux.

I had to buy a PCI SCSI card to make this attempt. It's a shame I probably threw away at least half a dozen of them in the past few years.

I'll let you know how that works out once I cool off.

Once you have OS9, there are updates available to bring it to OS 9.2.2. PM me if the Mac doesn't find them on its own.

Web browsers are problematic -- I still have mozilla-1.3.1 for OS9, but that was as new as I could find at the time.

I installed iCab which is nagware, but seems to do the best job of working with today's websites. Really, it's just needed for an easy way to get files into Mac OS 9 so I can then transfer onto a floppy for System 7. Since these old PowerMacs don't have USB and won't read CDs I make in Toast 10, having any web browser is a huge step forward.

The next time I see a blueberry iMac at a computer fair for $15, it's mine!

Keep an eye on freecycle, I've seen them pop up on my local one, people don't seem to be able to give them away.