Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

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Oldmacs
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Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by Oldmacs »

Hi,
Can you acces the Internet from within mini vmac on a windows computer?
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ClockWise
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Post by ClockWise »

Hello, welcome to the forum.

That is not possible in Mini vMac for Windows or for any host system. Sorry. :(

From the FAQ:

"Mini vMac does not currently support networking. A real Mac Plus can use TCP/IP over a modem. All that software will work in Mini vMac, but there is no modem emulation. Mini vMac emulates the serial ports with nothing attached. In the future, I’m thinking there could be a replacement of the Mac Plus TCP/IP software to run inside Mini vMac, that could use the Mini vMac extension mechanism to talk to the TCP/IP API of the host operating system. But that is likely quite some way away. Meanwhile, you could try Basilisk II."

http://minivmac.sourceforge.net/faq.html
gazhay
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Post by gazhay »

Whilst it is not possible with a standard build, you can accomplish this.

spritesmods.com/?art=macsearm

uses slirp and a bit of a hack.

I have tried some of the source on a custom build on osx, but I'm having PPP setup issues. If you watch the video on that link, the author does show NCSA mosaic working.

Slighlty above the average user, but with only about 5 extra lines of code and the slirp dependency it can be done.
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ClockWise
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Post by ClockWise »

Very interesting! Thanks for the link.

Here's the build: http://spritesmods.com/macsearm/minivmac-3.2.1-arm.tgz

From the readme:

"This is a version of minivmac hacked to compile on the arm-architecture
(under Linux) and to more or less emulate a Macintosh SE/30. It also incorporates
some code to redirect both emulated serial ports into a Linux program.

You'll need the ROM of a Macintosh SE or IIx for this to work. The
ROM file should be called MacIIx.ROM.

The serial port emulation is fairly hackish, but works as such: on startup the
emulator will start two instances of 'ttyprog.sh', one with the argument
'printer', the other with the argument 'modem'. The standard in and standard
out of te scripts get reddirected to the Macs virtual serial ports. Take a look
at the example ttyprog.sh in this directory if it isn't clear yet.

The serial port and ARM compilation are both the work of Jeroen Domburg
(jeroen@spritesmods.com) and the original author of minivmac (Paul C. Pratt)
has nothing to do with it, so don't mail him with questions about this source
tree.

Jeroen Domburg/Sprite_tm"

Someone try this!
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adespoton
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by adespoton »

Paul, I know this isn't "kosher" Mini vMac, as the TTY code is platform-dependent, but as pretty much every OS out there can do /dev/tty (or at least write to file) (Windows can do it with cygwin or mingw), maybe we could have the option to write to some virtual device like this? Then we should be able to do SLIP/Slirp or PPP over it like I used to do over a 1200 baud modem back in the day. This shouldn't need modem emulation; just bidirectional serial management on one of the ports that reads/writes an external file. The ability to set the location of this file would allow the user to set it to an actual file that's scripted, or a virtual file (even a PPP device) on the host system.

Let me know if I'm out to lunch here; I haven't peeked at this source lately to see how this fits with the current implementation. Seems easier than TCP/IP passthrough when the guest system is using an ancient version of the spec that's not completely compatible with the current version -- PPP and SLIP haven't changed at all.
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adespoton
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by adespoton »

Bumping an old topic...

As Mini vMac has the ability to compile a LocalTalk enabled version now, networking is possible (and has been for a few years)!

Instructions are available here:
http://www.mfort.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7

and you'll need the localtalk to TCP/IP bridge software found here:

http://www.mfort.net/forum/download/file.php?id=2

I'm thinking of creating a wrapper script that sets the host to promiscuous mode, runs the server in the background, and then launches Mini vMac. It will still need an LT-enabled build of Mini vMac to work. Also, starting with System 7, enabling LocalTalk requires a reboot which doesn't work with Mini vMac, so I'm still trying to figure out what to do there... 6.0.8 will just enable it. If Mini vMac wasn't built with LT enabled, you'll get a divide by 0 error when you attempt this.

[edit] This also provides a means of transferring files between a *real* Mac on LocalTalk over Ethernet and a modern Mac... just run a copy of Mini vMac on the real Mac, and it will be on the same network as the real one, and able to use FTP etc.
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ClockWise
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by ClockWise »

Thanks for the bump! I'm certainly going to experiment with that when I am home in August!
galgot
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by galgot »

adespoton wrote:Bumping an old topic...

As Mini vMac has the ability to compile a LocalTalk enabled version now, networking is possible (and has been for a few years)!

Instructions are available here:
http://www.mfort.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7

and you'll need the localtalk to TCP/IP bridge software found here:

http://www.mfort.net/forum/download/file.php?id=2

I'm thinking of creating a wrapper script that sets the host to promiscuous mode, runs the server in the background, and then launches Mini vMac. It will still need an LT-enabled build of Mini vMac to work. Also, starting with System 7, enabling LocalTalk requires a reboot which doesn't work with Mini vMac, so I'm still trying to figure out what to do there... 6.0.8 will just enable it. If Mini vMac wasn't built with LT enabled, you'll get a divide by 0 error when you attempt this.

[edit] This also provides a means of transferring files between a *real* Mac on LocalTalk over Ethernet and a modern Mac... just run a copy of Mini vMac on the real Mac, and it will be on the same network as the real one, and able to use FTP etc.
Re-bumping this interesting old thread,
Please Adespoton, with what ROM file did you succeed running this one ?
I've tried a MacII (all versions) , MacSE, MacClassic. renaming it "vMac.ROM", but each time it says "the vMac.ROM file seems corrupted..." then crashes.
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adespoton
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by adespoton »

Its target is set for the Mac Plus ROMs -- revision 3 is probably best. You'd need to change the compile flags to target a different Mac for it to work with that Mac's ROM. Current targets are Mac 128k, Mac 512ke, Mac Plus (default), Mac SE, Mac SE FDHD, Mac Classic, and Mac II.

See:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... -Dk7QDyKPY
for the list of ROMs and hashes that aligns with these machines.
galgot
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by galgot »

Thanks, managed to boot it with a Mac Plus ROMs -- revision 3.
Couldn't have network working though... :/ Tried with 6.0.8 and 7.5.5 VMs, on a 10.6 host, maybe this the problem. Will try on another host.
The instructions are a bit vague, like :
" The ip-address argument is an IP address on your LAN that is not currently in use by another machine. My network is configured for 192.168.1.0/24 for its subnet so I choose the ip-address to be 192.168.1.99.

ltoegateway <ip-address>"


Ok, 192.168.1.99 is not within 192.168.1.0/24. So if my router is set to assign 192.168.0.1 to 200, should I use something out of this range ? or a IP within this range (1 - 200) but not in use ?
tried both without success.

Also the command should be
ltoegw <ip-address>
not
ltoegateway

then :
Obtain Address set to Server
Gateway Address set to your routers IP address, in my case it is 192.168.1.1
Class B
Slider set so subnet is 0 and node is 16 bits
Domain is .
IP address is IP address of my router (which does the DNS, your enviroment may be an ISP machines IP address)


In MacTCP I try assigning the IP manually , so I suppose I assign the IP used with the ltoegw command (?)
A 192.169.1.1 is a class C if I try that in MacTCP (as is 192.168.0.59 that I try using) it changes to a Class C address... A class B address is something like 128.0.0.0 .

Anyways, strange.
galgot
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by galgot »

Tried on a 10.11 host too, no network.
I must be missing something.
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adespoton
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by adespoton »

Well, the Mini vMac patches are for LocalTalk, not for IP or Ethernet. Did you set up a LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge (either hardware or the one I linked)? You won't be able to connect to an Ethernet or IP network without it.

[edit] Also, Paul rolled those patches into the main code, so you can just set a flag while compiling the main code now to enable LocalTalk for any target system combination you want.

My next request from him has been, for some time, async serial support :) Because if the modem port is emulated, then we can run a script on the host machine to provide the modem port with a PPP interface.
galgot
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by galgot »

yes
I used the one you linked, here :
http://www.mfort.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6

Tried with instructions from here :
http://www.mfort.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7

It states to use MacTCP , so I suppose it uses IP ?
And even though, if it was working , shouldn't I see other shared Localtalk Macs in the Chooser ?

yes serial support would be great. There is already one doing that tho, not official. Can't find the link right now, but I have it running on my R-pi.
Can connect to the host via ZTerm. I think I saw a thread on the 68kmla forum someone managed to connect it to a PPP server on the host.
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adespoton
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by adespoton »

Yes; you should at least be able to see other shared Localtalk Macs, and if you're using those instructions, it *should* work.

However, I haven't tried getting it all working in a few years now. I'm guessing it'll break for me too.

If ZTerm can work, then PPP can work. My first way of getting MacTCP working on a Plus back in the day involved dialing up with ZTerm and running SLIrP on the target system, then connecting via SLIP client. If ZTerm is working, SLIrP and PPP should have no issues, assuming you've got the host server running.

Hopefully Paul can integrate the serial support, as that opens up all sorts of possibilities.

Of course, the next request then would be clock sync over the modem port :D Because then we've got MIDI.
WizKid
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Re: Acessing the internet from with in miniv mac

Post by WizKid »

adespoton wrote: Wed May 29, 2019 10:23 pm Hopefully Paul can integrate the serial support, as that opens up all sorts of possibilities.

Of course, the next request then would be clock sync over the modem port :D Because then we've got MIDI.
Any update?

Has serial support been integrated?
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