Re: Does anyone use Appletalk?

["Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de>]

On Wed, Nov 1, 2023, at 21:27, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Wed, 2023-11-01 at 13:26 +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>> Hi Geert,
>> 
>> On Wed, 2023-11-01 at 13:19 +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>> > > Isn't that a bit late?
>> > 
>> > It can always be reverted...
>> 
>> Sure, but I'd rather see such discussions before merging the removal
>> patch. Best would have been to reach out to the netatalk project, for
>> example and ask [1]. They just released version 3.1.18 of the
>> netatalk
>> server in October 2023.

I think you mean netatalk 2.2 for appletalk support, as the 3.x
versions only implement AFP over IP, with no localtalk/appletalk
support.

>> It's an incredibly cool project because it allows you to replace the
>> expensive Apple TimeMachine hardware with a cheap Raspberry Pi ;-).
>
> But... Time Machine debuted with 10.5 and AppleTalk got removed in
> 10.6; did the actual TimeCapsules ever support AppleTalk, or were they
> always TCP/IP-based?
>
> (also TimeMachine-capable Airport Extremes [A1354] are like $15 on
> eBay; that's cheaper than a Raspberry Pi)
>
> This patch only removes the Linux-side ipddp driver (eg MacIP) so if
> Time Capsules never supported AppleTalk, this patch is unrelated to
> TimeMachine.

If we had not removed all localtalk support already, ipddp
might have been used to bridge between a pre-ethernet mac
running macip and an IP based AFP server (netatalk or time machine).
Without localtalk support, that is not all that interesting of
course.

> What this patch *may* break is Linux as a MacIP gateway, allowing
> AppleTalk-only machines to talk TCP/IP to systems. But that's like
> what, the 128/512/Plus and PowerBook Duo/1xx? Everything else had a
> PDS/NuBus slot or onboard Ethernet and could do native
> MacTCP/OpenTransport...

As far as I can tell, https://github.com/jasonking3/macipgw
should work fine as a replacement for ipddp.

     Arnd