Easy WiFi for Vintage Macs with TheOldNet Serial WiFi Modem
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- Опубліковано 19 бер 2021
- Today we're going online, 90's style! Well, a retrofuturistic 1990's where Hayes-compatible dial-up modems could connect to a magic internet signal that permeates the air - WIFI!
We're trying out an awesome RS232 WiFi modem emulator from TheOldNet, which requires a little bit of work to get running on old Macs. But maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to live out a dream I mentioned in my very first-ever UA-cam video.
🍎 This video is part of the MARCHintosh series! marchintosh.com/
🍎 TheOldNet Serial WiFi Modem: www.tindie.com/products/theol...
🍎 If you need to make your own Mac serial adapter, use the fourth-down diagram here: macgui.com/upload/gallery/f_0...
🍎 DeathWish MUD: www.mudconnect.com/cgi-bin/se...
🍎 4 Dimensions MUD: www.mudconnect.com/cgi-bin/se...
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💾 For more vintage Apple stuff, please subscribe: ua-cam.com/users/ActionRetro?s...
💾 Support these retro computing shenanigans on Patreon! / actionretro
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Check out my Amazon page with links to my tools, adapters, soldering equipment, camera gear and more: www.amazon.com/shop/actionretro
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💬 Come talk about old computers on the BitBang Social Mastodon! bitbang.social
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#MARCHintosh #Retro #WiFi - Наука та технологія
A box with a flashing light zip-tied to a phone doesn't look dodgy at all in a coffee shop😁
🤣
No one has any right to care if you are trying to hack them jk
@@Zeon01 if someone hacked me with a powermac in 2022 i'd be so impressed i'd just let them have my money
@@supernoob17 twas the joke.
If I ever get the hang of 3D printing I'd probably make a box for one that has a space for a small enough power bank. It would be even neater to shape the case to look more like a vintage Hayes or US Robotics modem (or even gut an old modem case and do a nice job of putting the pieces in that)
12:19 - You really need to install the Black Night terminal emulator. It supports full color ANSI graphics, and I bet those BBS door scenes would look even more awesome.
Control-H, or whatever the Mac equivalent is, historically sent a backspace when the modem was command mode.
I am very, very old.
Heads up, the (most likely) reason your first serial cable with gender changer didn't work is you need a null modem in the middle to swap around the tx and rx pairs
YOU ARE A LEGEND! Was having the exact same problem trying to use a gender changer with my Apple //c. Got a null modem and it worked immediately!
11:00 Old school terminal tricks: ctrl+H to backspace and ctrl+D to delete in a terminal. Also, ctrl+W erases the word preceding the cursor, and ctrl+U wipes out the current line. It's very old Unix standard that works even in modern terminals.
If your keyboard has a real backspace key (actually says "backspace" or depicts it with a left pointing arrow), it will generally work fine in a terminal. But if the key says "delete" (I'm lookin' at you, Apple) then it sends an escape code in terminals with usually no visual result and you have to resort to the ctrl+ combo or remap the keys in the terminal and/or OS (I genuinely can't recall if the older software you're using has that remap capability).
Ahh, the halcyon days of BBSing. They were a lot of fun. Except that it took over an hour to download a single floppy at 2400 baud! I never had a phone line clean enough for 56k, so 33.6k is the fastest I ever got to before broadband, and that still took ~5 minutes to download 1MB.
I still have friends who type ^H^H^H in new platforms as a sorta joke, much like people do strike-through text jokes
Nice. I've been building my own wifi modems inside old 56k modems
"You are now sober"
Saddest part of this video
This is so fascinating to me. I am older-I was in middle school in late eighties and I have no memory of these, lol. We spent 45 minutes typing in a code in middle school to watch a hot air balloon glide across the screen. I was struck by how much processing skill these kind of games require of kids-just the reading alone. These are the games all kids should start with even now. I’m a teacher and I can’t imagine my students playing these-it really requires so much imagination. It’s obvious when you look at things like these why there is so much creativity coming from this generation across the board. It’s like your mind is constructing the game instead of it already being made yup for you. I can imagine as a kid that you are seeing this all in your head as you were playing. Great video.
this channel is so underrated and deserves more subscribers, and your videos are fantastic as always, keep up the good work man!
Hah thank you!
Agree. Good to watch, the guy who speaks with his hands
true, definitely one of the best computer channels. He should have at least as much as MichaelMJD, another one of my favorite creators.
When you tried to plug the modem into the Mac's Serial port, I kind of expected 65scribe's "Sproinnng" sound effect to play.
Followed by the obligatory “doesn’t do anything?” 😁
Man, I remember getting my first laptop, a second generation iBook with wifi (Airport) and OSX, after using PC's for several years, I was back in a new and much improved Mac world and truly living in the future. It was so awesome.
Hacking, Whipping, and zip ties. Can always tell this is an Action Retro video! :)
I have a Mac identical to yours, a 128K upgraded to a Plus and I fulfilled my dream of getting it online 6 months ago via a WiFi 232 serial modem. Still using it to this day! I watched your original video about wanting to play a MUD on your Mac before I even bought one and I felt the same way.
Quite a clever little device. I’ve got a few old machines I can use easily online now 👍
Technology, am I right?
This video really brings back sweet memories! My first computer was a Mac SE in 1989 (just one tiny step up from the Mac Plus upgrade you demoed.) I had mine decked out with 4MB RAM, a 20MB internal hard drive, 2400baud Hayes compatible modem, and the latest copy of Zterm. Yep, screen scrolling was a bit laggy, but completely usable. I spent four years of college dialing into the local university "VAX Cluster," where I would check email and telnet to MUDs, BBSes, and IRC, as well as use gopher and public ftp archives to find and download all of the latest freeware and shareware for my Mac.
I love that these old machines can still connect to the internet, and that there are still fun retro destinations on the internet. My favorite is ISCABBS; just telnet to bbs.iscabbs.com. ISCABBS is a telnet accessible BBS that has been in operation since 1989. It is the oldest (as far as I know) continuously operating free online community on the internet. With nearly 1,000 active users and public forums, sometimes you'll see nearly 30 people logged in at the same time! ISCABBS also contains private forums, internal mail, and instant messaging.
ISCABBS would make a great place to connect to if you do more demos, especially if you want to show interaction with other users via chat. It's viewable in ANSI color as well as black and white.
Thanks again for this and other videos. I'm grinning ear to ear remembering all the fun times online with my old Mac. :)
Oh nice, I'll definitely check that BBS out!
Who needs all the power of a Vax at home when you can just dial into one? 😁
I seem to recall the guy who wrote “The Cuckoo’s Nest” also dialled-in to his university’s Vax system, albeit that was for sysadmin stuff.
I would love to see you go one step further on this with some of the slightly newer macs... actual "real internet" with ppp or slip
PPP/SLIP is possible even on the older macs. "Back in the day" I had it running on my 1989 vintage Mac SE, although just barely. Still, I could have POPmail and two telnet sessions open at the same time before it started dropping the connection.... ;)
Check the latest on this project :D
As far as I know, the latest firmware for this device supports PPP automatically. I'm considering getting one for my Mac Plus if I can get it working.
@@TaijanDean I did exactly that. It hardly works because of a lack of flow control. Wait until then to buy one unless you just want to BBS with it
I have fell in love with this channel
I really want to get an old DEC or Wyse terminal connected with one of these , but those are kinda hard to come by right now!! Awesome video as usual.
man i love this. your my favorite retro channel!
Oh yeah, dude. 8MHz machines will do things like that perfectly fine! I started my BBS days on a CoCo2 with a 300 baud modem. I used an 8088 8MHz machine for YEARS on BBSes. Today, I use Apple II series machines, 68k Macs (including a Plus with 4 megs, also!), etc. You should be great at 9600bps on those machines. I'm not sure what the maximum BPS rate is on the older Macs, but the comparable PCs were 9600 baud unless you had 16550 UARTs. 9600 is way more than adequate for these purposes though. Loved the video!
Bloody brilliant. Great work!
This is great! Very entertaining video. I need that thing to my old Compaq LTE's.
He made it look way more suspicious by zip tying all those cables to his phone.
Now that is something I could only dream of as a kid. The first time I seen a wireless laptop it blew my mind. I have all kinds of projects involving wireless and dial up that I hope to make one day on another channel that will be tech focused. This stuff inspires to live out my childhood dreams.
I had a longer comment but I spoke too soon, you ended up doing exactly what I was thinking and man it truly made me happy. THAT IS SO COOL MAN.
nice! Need to take my Tandy Model 200 into a coffee shop and connect to wifi with this device. Great Marchintosh content
I absolutely love mine! I have two of them, and was able to do a zmodem bridge between two MS-DOS PCs with them... and also set up a Concurrent DOS terminal server over the internet using one of these! Great video!! As for me, I predominantly use Ethernet to get my old PCs online.
This brings back memories of dialing in to the local BBS on my Apple II plus that I still have.
And yes, I would like to see more Macintosh shenanigans, keep it up!
Haha thanks Rocky!
What an awesome video. The BBS days were so awesome, thanks for showing how much fun this is. I have a WiModem 232 for old computers like Amiga and Apple IIGS. Most of my PPC Macs have built in Ethernet so it is easy to still use those. However, you don't get the cool retro feeling of using the Hayes command set with ethernet.
Yay MUDs! glad to see them get some love. I used to play on muds in high-school. :D "Moooom quick picking up the phone!"
you deserve way more subs
Love the soldering montage sounds 👍
I’m odd like that
Amazing. I was thrilled just to plug a USB ball mouse into my phone the other day. ;D
Nice! For OSX macs there also exists a custom driver for android usb tethering
Greetings from Argentina 🇦🇷🇦🇷🇺🇸🇺🇸💾
Greetings!
Thats A Realy Cool Emulator Yes Your 128k Mac Brings Back A lot Of Memories I Bought That Very Same 128 Mac Back In 1984 New In Cupertino Ca Sterlings Computer Store For $2600 That Also Included The Image Writer Printer A lot Of Money Back In 1984 And Have Been A Loyal Apple User Great Video Sean
Wait. "Way back in the '90s"? LOL. Dude I love this Chan.
I never dialed into a BBS in the late 90s, but I did figure out I could dial into my local library, where besides the usual library things like letting you search the catalog, let you access the internet with lynx. It was a great backup for when my AOL minutes were used up.
I was going to say, why did you even pay for the AOL minutes then, until I remembered it was still a walled-garden for a lot of its services at that time. (I came to AOL a little later, 2002-ish.)
"I don't use my cellphone for anything else!" - hearty chuckle at that one, very good. :D
You might be able to a) use a battery bank that is small and compact for coffee shops or b) a small mod to add a Lithium battery pack on the power connections of the device. Though a small battery pack would be cheaper and EZ to use.
You just need something which can supply 5 volts. If there's an ADB port on the laptop that could be used with a simple adapter cable.
If it has a pcmcia slot just stick in a USB card and use the laptops power.
Awesome! Thanks.
You could paint the box a dark grey or even better, an excellent beige .
On the *inside* so (no matter how bad a botched paint job you do), it'll look proper on the outside.
Thanks for this video! I’ve purchased parts to make something similar with a PiZero, but now I ordered this instead.
Neat device. Just ordered one after watching your video. I recently built an IDEFile for a Lisa and found that the pin outs for serial did not align with a normal IDC ribbon cable connector. I had to wire up my own cable too.
I like hardware hacks like this, providing modern solutions to vintage tech. Need a replacement hard drive? SCSI2SD or a CF2IDE adapter. Floppy drive dead? FloppyEMU for Macs, GOTEK's for basically everything else. Retrotink for getting old-school game consoles connected to modern TV's.
Neat! That could be useful for a retro computer but with Wi-Fi. Long live to the macs!!
cool build
This is so fascinating as someone who never got to experience any of this when it was new. I'm only 25 and my first memories of the internet probably date back to around 2005. I've been fascinated by retro tech for as long as I can remember. I'd love to own more retro devices but I haven't gotten super lucky with finds yet and ebay can be quite expensive.
Nice DIY stand!
I wonder if the firmware on that device could be expanded to "emulate" PPP or SLIP, so you can get online.
TheOldNet ss an ESP8266 board. I found a SLIP on github martin-ger/esp_slip_router Looks like SLIP with static IP.
That zip-tie job is a piece of art! Not sure whether it helps with looking any less suspicious though. ;)
I managed to get my Powerbook 170 "online" 15 years ago, by configuring internet connection sharing on Windows XP and having the Powerbook dial into the PC via PPP. It was a pain to get everything set up, but at least I managed to get it to work briefly loaded google.com on ancient versions of the Wannabe and iCab browsers. As far as I remember, I didn't get the PPP working on my Mac Plus. That modem bridge sure sounds ten times better than that mess!
Haha amazing
I'd like to see something like this for PowerPC Macs from 1998-2006 whereby you could have an 802.11N slot into the AirPort Extreme or Original Port.
You have taken on a project that I am looking to do myself. I also played a lot of muds and still have a few I play now. I just got a Powerbook 180c up and booting. Next is doing this modem work and away I go.
Neat antenna solution. Very steampunk.
I remember connecting to a VAX system through a 300 baud modem, then later a 1200 baud one. Painful, just for text! It wasn't until I got a 9600 bps connection that the text scrolled by at a rate faster than I could read it. MUDs weren't much fun before this! :)
Awesome video, I haven't tried to play any terminal games using my modem, I'll have to check it out!
Can you tell me how you connected the modem to your mac plus? I have an SE 30 I'd like to hook up. Where did you buy a cable to convert from mini 8 to db9, I couldn't find any with the right gender.
I wound up splicing a Mac cable and a standard serial cable using the fourth diagram here: macgui.com/upload/gallery/f_0/user_2/regular/upload_4705.png
@@ActionRetro I see now @3:21, this is great! Thanks for documenting all of this. I was looking into this last week so this is great timing.
I would like to offer these macs as an optional addon if I can find them in bulk for a good price.
But I see now I shouldn't assume they will work. I'll have to get my hands on a cable like the one you showed and check the pins to see what could be wrong.
I wonder if you tried the multimeter step yourself on the official cable with the gender changer if you would spot a difference between it and the one you hand made.
@23:45 genius!
@@TheOldNet Hi there TheOldNet,
Was wondering if you've since come up with a fix for this? I have a Mac Plus I would love to get hooked online using the WIFI Modem. If so, I'm one step closer to building my dream setup. Only 36 years late to the party but at least I'm here. 😆
Well, I know what my next little project is going to be. You can actually make your own Wifi modem if you want. There are instructions online. You can even buy 8pin mini-DIN plugs for the Apple end of the cable, although they’re not fun to solder.
Nice work 👍
how about using ADB (or on PC: the PS/2 / DIN) Port to power the WiFi Modem?
I just got a Macintosh classic before watching this video
For computers with a built in RJ11 modem I have an RPI set up running dreampi to connect to the internet.
But for my older stuff I really ought to get something like this.
That old 540c has a beautiful screen
I've been dinking around with electronics for decades and sending serial commands to modems since using 2G/3G and today I finally learned that AT = Attention 😳
I just bought an XP-era HP Pavilion laptop. My plan is to install FreeDos on it for a retro distraction-free writing environment. But, I definitely want to get one of these and do the BBS thing in my free time.
Why not try void Linux? It’s the lightest weight OS with modern features you can find. Install neovim with plug-ins for writing and you’re golden
This reminds me a bit of the "Mobile Desktop" prank by Improv Everywhere, where they took old desktop computers into Starbucks. Nice video, I didn't know MUDs were still around.
Apple Mac to ImageWriter I cable with DB-25 to DB-9 converter is what I use on my Mac SE/30
Good vid, I found one called WiFi64 on Github, it was basically the same thing as yours, running on an esp-01, but intended for a Commodore 64 (which I don't have) I connected it to a TTL to RS232 converter pcb, and put the whole thing in an old translucent modem case.
This I use on my old TRS-80 model 1. Good fun.
I'll have to try some of those sites you mentioned.
I've been looking for a way to use one of these WiFi modems to connect to a NAS so I can save all my old TRS software where a modern PC can access and share it.
I used a PB 165 through much of college. Wish I still had it. Not to use, but just to have around.
What Mac would you say is the oldest that you could still get to load a website page in a browser with this wifi device? Powerbook G3? Or older? Nice video btw. Love retro Macs!
I'm not sure about possible with this emulator, but "back in the day" there was a very early version of the "Mosaic" web browser that would run on Macs like the b/w one demoed here. Very crashy, and you pretty much had to "turn off images" in order to get it to work. So "technically possible" although not actually usable.
Thanks you! What of G3 Macs, if you know? Or in Mac OS 9?
I spent a lot of time with a MacPlus and a metal 2400bps modem playing TW2002 and LORD.
Man does he love his powerbooks
Have you tried SSHing into anything from that setup? We're close to the same age, but the BBS/MUD stuff is not something I messed with back in the day. Still cool stuff!
1 annoyed guy from Starbucks downvoted this video :D
🤣
@@ActionRetro frick those other 7 sadists
Can you still get PCMCIA wifi cards? But it seems PowerBook didn't have expansion slots until the 500s and the 1400?
Did you tone out the Apple adapter? It's possible that one or the other is a null modem cable, which while identical in appearance has a different pinout than a serial cable.
Also, if you want to get an even easier CF solution, you could use a PC Card to CF adapter.
Lol the powerbook 1400, i first connected mine to the internet with a Dell TrueMobile 1150 PCMCIA card.
i use dos 6 or 7 and a pci network card and a packet driver on a 2.20ghz compaq evo
I've still got a Phone Modem with the cups to put the handset into. I used to love dialing into BBS systems. I had massive phone bills back then. I don't miss long distance charges. I wonder if FidoNet is still running?
HE HAS THE REAL MINI GENDER CHANGER OMG
I'd love to see some web browsers working with it!
4:49 did you build the RS422 to RS422 cable or the RS422 to RS232 adapter in the pinout guide?
Oh woah
Hey - I love your 1400c! I have a g3 upgraded 1400c but the screen is terrible. Do you have any suggestions on how I can fix the screen? (Pretty sure it is a bad backlight).
I wanna do this, I have the same chipset esp 8266 with the at commands flashed to it. My problem is the serial rs232 setup.. I get nothing from at
I have an old multiple scan monitor but I am having a hard time finding an apple Female DB 15 to male vga cable. Would you know where to get one?
Anazing to think your channel popped up a year ago!
The oldest laptop I've got is a Toshiba Libretto 50CT. All I'd need to get it online is a PCMCIA WiFi card... or a dongle for my 3com ethernet card
I wonder if you could pump the output into a screen reader and play it without any eyeballs?
That face when the BBS you logged into back in the 90's in high school is featured on a youtube channel in 2021... O_o
Amazing
how did you configure zterm to connect at 9600? When I change connection speed to 9600 it was not responding. I could only make connection at 300..
If this thing had an Irda header it would be perfect.
Just picked up a gateway 2100 solo locally and im curious about this kinda connectivity.
Is there a way to mount this internally? It looks like a hacker's tool on the outside of the casing.
Could this be used with a Macintosh plus so I can browse your 68k news website?
you need a null-modem adapter for the apple dongle
Lol, yes much less suspicious and more respectable with the zip tie.
nice I use to us bs on c64 back in early 90s
Cool
Any way to get PPP running and browse TheOldNet or download from Macintosh Gardens?
You cannot do PPP with it but that is important to me. I will make a device that can do this, I just can't say when.
The keyboard on that PowerBook 165 looks heavenly, why can't we have keyboard keys like that on everyday laptops now?
Wait, i'm not a retro tech person... At 4:07 the port on the left doesn't support the card? Correct me if i'm wrong