BlueSCSI getting WiFi (now beta)



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Author	BlueSCSI getting WiFi (now beta) (Read 119386 times)
68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #15 on: May 13, 2024, 19:23 I just remember my last Thinkpad (and the last system I'll ever buy for brand name alone): A power behemoth of its day, that had cost me close to US$ 5k to fit it with as much RAM, disk space and add-ons as money could buy. And then Lenovo decided to drop that model virtually over night. All of a sudden I couldn't even get the battery replaced, because the internal firmware checked each piece of hardware for a certificate to ensure its not from an unlicensed 3rd party source. And yes, they had stopped manufacturing spare parts for it the very same moment they had stopped making the model itself. I can understand that if not too many people are ready to spend that much cash on a laptop that you stop selling it. But the spare parts, too - just after you pushed a firmware upgrade (at the very last moment) disabling any 3rd party add-ons?? For heaven's sake, have some pity with your loyal customers! All my computers are from known brands and I wouldn't dare guess how many of them have similar "watch dog" routines integrated into their firmware now. So pardon me for doubting that too much tinkering be possible with these in years to come. I know for a fact that e.g. most Samsung tablets and smartphones require an exceeding amount of brain power just to get them rooted. Which then in turn renders vast amounts of software inoperable on them, because those apps are coded not to run on rooted systems under any circumstance.
Last Edit: May 13, 2024, 19:27 by 68040
Neal_SE30 256 MB Posts: 401 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #16 on: May 13, 2024, 19:31 I didn’t get on with bluescsi at all, so much so I took it out and brought a few old hdd’s much faster and larger space too.

Neal_SE30 256 MB Posts: 401 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #17 on: May 14, 2024, 13:58 Also I’m not sure why but bluescsi stopped all external scsi from working. no cd-rom or even worse my beloved Zip drives. I was told it was the psu in the se/30 so I recapped and refurbished that and it still didn’t work, slightly off voltage on the power rail but enough to make the bluescsi supersede all other scsi devices. Zip is more important to me so I ripped it out and threw it away. I have 2 network cards, a network hub with package switching so not bothered about wifi but I could see that as useful to some. Though it didn’t work for me, I am so glad people like that bother to build and design solutions for our classic machines P.s. I believe it’s more a compact Mac issue rather the bluescsi itself, still getting the profiles on and getting the disk size as I wanted. Wasn’t easy, in fact I gave up and used a pre done one that didn’t meet my needs. Just a lesson to others I suppose but think later versions and on other Mac’s it’s got promise.
Last Edit: May 14, 2024, 16:47 by Neal_SE30
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #18 on: May 19, 2024, 14:36 Thank you for your feedback! I asked a couple of people and to sum it up, m y impression is that there's roughly a 50/50 divide between people who happily use it - and those who have nothing but trouble with it. The later maybe slightly in the majority. I got my BlueSCSI WiFi yesterday in the mail. I ordered from One Geek Army from Belgium, which might be an interesting tip for all your Europeans. Offers them fully assembled too ...and including a mounting tray. Shipping was fast and everything packaged well. Now went to read up the install instructions for both BlueSCSI and the WiFi. No manual that came with it, just a QR code leading to GitHub. From a first glance, setting it up will likely take the better half of an afternoon. Too bad there don't seem many plug&play type of solutions anymore.

nulleric 8 MB Posts: 10 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #19 on: May 20, 2024, 20:44 As I do a majority of the support for BlueSCSI I can sum up 98% of BlueSCSI issues in 2 categories - 1) Bad SD Card/Card format or 2) Bad termination/power. Looking through this thread I'd suspect we could work together could get most of the issues fixed, or even just going through our Trouble Shooting[0] page in the docs. I don't frequent this site (though do have an RSS feed setup) so not the best place to troubleshoot. OneGeekArmy is adamant about reducing waste, hence why there is no printed instructions, and our docs are the most up to date anyways. OneGeekArmy is also the author of Disk Jockey[1], which if you've not looked at in a while has a ton of great features added) If you have any suggestions on how to make WiFi plug and play please let us know. Since the networking is handled in MacOS - besides making an image with the daynaport drivers already installed and the BlueSCSI WiFi DA - I don't think there's more we could do. It's pretty straight forward though, let us know if you have any issues, happy to help. https://bluescsi.com/docs/Troubleshooting#what-to-try-first [1] https://diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu/

wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #20 on: May 20, 2024, 21:13 Sorry to sound so harsh, but there is some irony in requiring newer hardware and a modern browser to access documentation to save a piece of paper and reduce waste.

cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever	Reply #21 on: May 21, 2024, 05:55 Easy enough fix http://bluescsi.com/docs/Troubleshooting via Archive.org http://diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu/ via Archive.org So long as Classic web browsers can read the HTML code, all's good
Last Edit: May 21, 2024, 08:42 by Bolkonskij
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #22 on: May 21, 2024, 08:40 @nulleric First off, thank you for posting here! As I re-read my comment I think it might have sounded too negative / nagging - which is definitely NOT what I want to convey. But it's the tricky thing with non-verbal communication. I really appreciate Eric's work and those who support him (like you!). So let me first express my gratitude for all the work you guys put in. I've yesterday successfully set up my BlueSCSI WiFi on the IIci. It worked suprisingly seamless for me, I copied two images of System 7.1 Pro and 6.0.8 onto the SD card (an old 2GB Transcend). I was surprised to learn that the SD Card Formatter did format my SD card automatically in FAT 16 (which I guess is due to its "meager" 2GB size) but it worked nicely. Had a period of chicken/egg problems getting the required drivers for networking on the IIci and had to go back to a modern machine and put an image with utilities / drivers on it. That's maybe one point I think would help with plug & play - have ready-made images of OS installs including the networking extensions / wi-fi DA to immediately get going. (I assume it's what a lot of people want; sans a few purists who prefer manual installs) Another suggestion would be to include SD-cards with pre-installed OSes that don't require a modern computer. Now I know that sounds like a terrible load of work (getting the cards, putting the images on it, testing them) but in the end my impression is that a lot of errors and problems are SD card related (please let me know if I'm wrong here!) and maybe, just maybe, it would cost you some more time first, but save you hours on support later on. (and frustrated people posting on the net) Just a suggestion. It'd make it a product without a dependency for a modern computer, more plug & play and would ultimately be a great thing. Anyway, I've been running 7.1 on the IIci with the BlueSCSI WiFi for a couple of hours by now and had no freezes, no stability issues - happy here and thankful that folks still produce, maintain and sell stuff for our beloved old Macs! @wove Yeah, I think the problem these days is that the retro Mac community is pretty much split. There's the guys hanging out on YouTube / Discord / 68kMLA on modern machines and assume that's what everybody uses - and there's those of us over here or at Mac OS 9 Lives or someplace else, who don't necessarily have a modern computer (frankly, because an old Mac and a modern smartphone does the trick too) It's just that we aren't as vocal, and are maybe a little less "sensationalistic" than your average retro Mac YouTuber, hence getting less attention. I assume that makes this part of the community easy to overlook or marginalize.
Last Edit: May 21, 2024, 15:22 by Bolkonskij
Jatoba 256 MB Posts: 270 System 9 Newcomer!	Reply #23 on: May 21, 2024, 10:26 A little rant from me. Please do skip if not in the mood to be bothered with it: Gotta side with @wove on this one, as well. As someone who used to dive into my own neighborhood's river to voluntarily collect trash using a litter picker and dispose of it properly on a regular basis back in Germany, as well as someone who doesn't ever litter and separates trash materials per type to facilitate recycling, and especially as someone who knows how many times more important it is to REUSE instead of recycling, I feel very entitled to point out the sheer hypocrisy of near-100% of all greenwashing campaigns and of those who were greenwashed. Like Windows 11 with its "lowering carbon emissions" nefarious, dishonest and disingenuous propaganda, built into the OS itself, whilst simultaneously being an OS that requires much newer hardware than all Windows versions before it, thus encouraging ever-bigger landfills (while also adding even more hardware-level spyware as a bonus). The whole carbon nonsense is pseudo-scientifically used and being weaponized against farmers in Europe (first Netherlands, then the rest such as Germany) and elsewhere. (In other words, attacking directly our food security and seeking to monopolize and control all food, in the hands of a state. How green!) Whenever they follow whatever is the "Next Thing TM" that television and the "news"-paper is telling them to, people are generally extremely half-hearted and superficial, and absolutely don't look into things. "Look over here! Now look over there!". I'm glad how more and more people are finally opening their eyes little by little, but for those that haven't yet, there's zero concept of skepticism and critical thinking, just parroting and "sheeping", regardless of academic and other qualifications, from medical doctors to store clerks. In fact, the higher the qualifications, the higher the odds of such, due to longer-term conditioning not to question "authority" (in academia the academic staff and teachers, and as a citizen the policy makers), and especially not to scrutinize all forms of academic publications that are demonstrably and scientifically false, yet ruled as "scientific" nonetheless as an instrument for policy making. Sorry, I had to get that out of my chest. I think being conservative about material use is fine if that's what those behind BlueSCSI want to do, but perhaps do consider printing a tiny wee little minimalist manual with tiny writing on it for the very few people (relatively-speaking) that actually go and buy the product. And make things retro-accessible. (That was a nice workaround found by @cballero, though!)

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #24 on: May 21, 2024, 12:15 Please, don't let this drift into politics. We have a "no politics" guideline after unhappy events and S7T really isn't the place to discuss these things. We're a friendly little community of System 7 fans, so let's keep it at that. Talk about the BlueSCSI v2, talk about manuals and dependencies on modern hardware but let's not leave our cozy little bubble and talk about food security, greenwashing and recycling. These topics are all worthy to discuss, but this isn't the place for that. Can we agree on that? :-) On the topic - man! Transfering the stuff from my network backup wirelessly with 40kb/s back to the IIci sure takes some hours and not much to do meanwhile. Can't wait to get iCab up and be on here from the IIci again (on OS9.2 / Mac Mini G4 right now)
Last Edit: May 21, 2024, 12:18 by Bolkonskij
wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #25 on: May 21, 2024, 13:53 I have always been well behind the curve on networking. It was after the turn of the century before I got around to replacing phone net with ethernet. Which happened just in time for everything to switch to wireless. Today's networking transfers files faster than the old Mac's SCSI interface could move data. The first TimeMachine backup to the TimeCapsule seemed to take forever, but realizing that I it was moving close to a terabyte of data, it was actually pretty quick. I am somewhat disappointed that I have not been able to connect to it with the Classic Mac OS or Linux. It might be possible, but for networking my expertise only extends to point and click solutions. I can understand how useful a BlueSCSI device would be, my first stab at ethernet involved a SCSI ethernet adaptor, which did work pretty well. Of course at the time I had a scanner, CD drive, and external hard drive hooked up to SCSI as well and I do recall that whole chain being a bit flakey at times. Speed is always relative, ethernet was a big jump over phone net yet while being more convenient than sneaker net, it was not really either faster or more reliable.

cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever	Reply #26 on: May 22, 2024, 22:35 I did write a college paper on the virtues of not allowing computer electronics to be considered obsolete by the industry, and happily bought, used and retrofitted every old Mac (and a few PCs, lol) I could get my hands on I keep forgetting we can "prettify" our links now, so thanks for the assist with that, Bolkonskij! And venting, well, it's human, and being kind to all, well, it makes the world better for everyone; so as imperfect as any of us can be at any given time, I celebrate all of our collective achievements and my great friends who tinker, hack and dissect every possible avenue to help each other of us out, and definitely look forward to more fun "Macintoshing" exploits! I also think the SD card idea is brilliant, Bolkonskij maybe we can upload an "unofficial" image for the SCSI, and possibly slap a rough manual together? I'm thinking a few users may have already made something like this, they'd just need to share it with the world, you know?

nulleric 8 MB Posts: 10 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #27 on: May 23, 2024, 17:02 We do provide a .hda image file with the driver (actually not a file, it places some resources in the System file) and it does have the WiFi DA on it as well. You can't please everyone, some want fresh installs, some want just base installs, some want everything installed. Happy medium is we provide a "full install" of an OS and other drives with things they might need to bootstrap or setup wifi, or whatever they wish to do. Note full installs sometimes have things like A/ROSE which can cause some machines to crash on boot. (or contain PPC things on 68k, or vice versa) BlueSCSI sellers are just tinkerers like you and me - adding setting up and testing SD cards to the mix adds time, which we all don't have enough of. I'll say too that based on how many people come to support, and how many BlueSCSI's we ship a week, this issue is very minor (1-2% if that?) People usually don't post when everything works - but some do and we really appreciate it! Now a mostly joking aside --- If you got a BlueSCSI it was probably via a modern computer - if you manufactured them from JLCPCB or got them from a seller - you used ssl/tls and a credit card online - maybe your friend had an extra one and gave it to you, but then you can bug them for the docs It's fun to draw a line and say "I'm only using system 7!" but.. why not System 6? or prodos? or a PDP11? We're all just doing things for fun with retro computers, some take it further, some not. Who'm I to judge what you do with them That said if I had some easy to publish too (eg works in my modern automation flow) ftp site I could host and publish the docs there too, they are just plain html. Maybe retro.bluescsi.com I (personally) enjoy the progress of technology and new things - some here don't, but we can all agree that it's pretty fun to use old Macs - so lets agree and have some fun.

alectrona6400 16 MB Posts: 28 Curious nerd woman with crazy ideas!	Reply #28 on: May 23, 2024, 23:49 The Wifi Daynaport emulation has always intrigued me... crazy how people could get that working over SCSI!! If that means going online... I could finally have a dedicated video card and a network card in a IIsi.. fun!! Also would love to see my PowerBook 520 go online once I fix that up some more.

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #29 on: May 24, 2024, 07:28 nulleric, thank you (again) for taking the time to answer! The difficulty with computing is that you never know what people are using it for. There's two ways to deal with it from a manufacturer / dealer's view - the "eat up or die" way or trying to find a solution that works for everybody but leaves the flexibility of customization. Just to give you an idea of my "path to BlueSCSI". A Mac Mini G4 is my most modern computer right now. I have a Mac Pro from 2010 as well, but it's stashed away in the basement. Well, it's not true entirely because my smartphone is a phenomenal little computer. And it's the smartphone I used to place my order with One Geek Army and pay for it. Like I said before, the combo of a modern smartphone for online shopping, banking etc. and a classic Mac for computing works very well for me - and others too. So the shopping part wasn't the hard one, it was setting up the BlueSCSI WiFi. I actually had to ask my wife if I could use her Mac Book Pro from work for writing the images to the SD card. This is where my suggestion for more plug & play comes from. No matter what and where, but if one system depends on another system to work, that's almost never a fully satifactory solution. Like I wrote before, there's people who view a classic Macintosh as a hobby. They hang out on modern social media with their modern iMac and it's nostalgia or fun with tinkering that lets them return to classic Macs. Yet there's also others - there's even some people who still use their classic Macs productively, because they do what they want to do with them. It's all about requirements. And that's the point - everybody is different, everybody has different ideas and wishes and ultimately I think it's cool to not leave anybody in our little community behind if it is anyhow feasible. If you (and Eric, and others) can do an extra step to ensure that, it's MUCH appreciated! As for the image suggestion - good one, thanks! I must have missed that image with the full drivers, I went for the 6.0.8 and the 7.1 Pro images linked to from the official wiki page - and both of them didn't come with any. Good you mentioned it, so somebody else interested should look that up for initially getting things up and running (or alternatively, as I did, make some floppy disks with the respective software and copy it over the old sneaker net way ... had been some time since I did that :-)) Anyway, keep up the good work! ---------------------- Posted from my IIci and BlueSCSI v2 WiFi :-)
Last Edit: May 24, 2024, 08:40 by Bolkonskij
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