Interesting solution for LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge

pfuentes69

pfuentes69

Active Tinkerer
Oct 27, 2021
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Switzerland
I could get (quite cheap) one of these devices: Asanté Microprint, which is supposed to be made to connect a LocalTalk printer to Ethernet, but I heard that it could allow also to connect a Mac.
Screenshot 2021-11-28 at 20.01.20.png


It worked at first try. I could connect to shared disks of other Macs connected with Ethernet. Pretty neat!
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If I could find one for $20, i'd buy it too!

I'm pretty much off of buying things on ebay lately. Inflated pricing and misleading listings. "Here's a piece of paper I found in the garbage with an Apple logo on it! Only $5,000! L@@K Steve Jobs!"
 
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pfuentes69 said:
I got mine for less than 20$… Maybe I was lucky.
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Extremely lucky. I've been watching them for the past few years. Several years ago, they were in the find in the ditch next to the road category -- or pay enough to make it worth shipping. Not true any more.

The AsanteTalk retailed for $100. For the last couple of years the MicroAsantePrint and the AsanteTalk have been showing up for about $80 - $150 with some excursions higher and lower.

The AsantePrint was Asante's first (?, earlier anyway) product in this line. It was a much larger box.

Then came the MicroAsantePrint which was available in a version with all three ethernet ports, or just with RJ45. It also has some network management functions built-in.

The AsanteTalk was released at about the same time as the original iMac -- which was the first Mac to lack serial ports and so lacked any form of LocalTalk connectivity. Asante perceived a suddenly increased need to bridge from older LocalTalk Macs to the new ethernet only iMacs and later models.

The AsanteTalk is just like the MicroAsantePrint, except, the AsanteTalk only has an RJ45 ethernet port (AUI and BNC not available) and the AsanteTalk lacks the network management utilities that the MicroAsantePrint included.
 
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I just bought a G3 233 for $100 that I'm gonna use with Vicomsoft Router to connect LocalTalk to Ethernet, plus it has SCSI and I can get a cheap PCI usb card to bridge SCSI/USB. There's even an internal Zip dive. And it's still cheaper than an Asanté solution!
 
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Thank you guys for this thread. I actually just purchased the ebay product from the second post as I was in search for such a device. What I ultimately want to achieve is to network a physical mac plus with a mini vmac running on modern mac.

I will report back when I receive it.

Many thanks,

Andrew
 
I managed to snag a lot of 3 Micro AsantePrint units a few weeks ago. Tested with my Classic -- was able to connect to my Netatalk server just as easily as my IIcx does with its ethernet card.

Ironically, I couldn't get it to print :D
 
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techav said:
I managed to snag a lot of 3 Micro AsantePrint units a few weeks ago. Tested with my Classic -- was able to connect to my Netatalk server just as easily as my IIcx does with its ethernet card.

Ironically, I couldn't get it to print :D
Click to expand...

Need an icon under the "like" button for jealous. Maybe a green meanie.
 
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This is where I got my Asanté bridge:

Occasionen

www.riesenservices.ch www.riesenservices.ch

This is in German, and not convenient outside Europe, but I could find here some cool stuff for cheap. In particular they have two Farallon adapters, one is the model you mention:
Farallon EtherMac Printer Adapter Macserial-zu-Ethernet RJ45 & BNC, for 17.- CHF ($18, 16€)
 
techav said:
I managed to snag a lot of 3 Micro AsantePrint units a few weeks ago. Tested with my Classic -- was able to connect to my Netatalk server just as easily as my IIcx does with its ethernet card.

Ironically, I couldn't get it to print :D
Click to expand...
Want to sacrifice one to me to reverse engineer? ;)
 
@Kai Robinson

I have this one out of the case waiting for me to fix what is probably a voltage regulator issue.

Most of the chips look fairly standard and expected -- DP83902, 8530, static RAM, EPROM, and voltage regulator.

However, there is an Asante custom chip on there. The full number on the Asante chip is AD20037, Orbit 6294A. I scraped the label after photographing. It's a crusty, hard to scrape label -- doesn't come up except as disintegrating particles.

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There's an outfit called Jotrin whose website makes it look like they have datasheet for the Asante part and then requires registration before you can download it. But after I registered, the link to the datasheet was no longer clickable, so I think that may be just a deceptive registration trap.
 
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@trag nice pictures!

Orbit Semiconductor still has a website .. barely. I can't find anything useful beyond the obvious — they were an ASIC company. I can't imagine there's much need for really complex logic for this board. Probably a DRAM controller, some address decoding, maybe some timing state machines?

Might be interesting to try to dump that ROM on the back side and see what code it runs.

I'm guessing that's at least a 4-layer board? Doesn't look like there's nearly enough going on on the back side to run everything.
 
techav said:
@trag nice pictures!

Orbit Semiconductor still has a website .. barely. I can't find anything useful beyond the obvious — they were an ASIC company. I can't imagine there's much need for really complex logic for this board. Probably a DRAM controller, some address decoding, maybe some timing state machines?

Might be interesting to try to dump that ROM on the back side and see what code it runs.

I'm guessing that's at least a 4-layer board? Doesn't look like there's nearly enough going on on the back side to run everything.
Click to expand...
Well, I was assuming that 514256 chip south of the DP83902 was a static RAM, but sure enough, it's a dynamic RAM, so I guess that Asante chip must be at least acting as a memory controller.

Except, the large chip on the left is an 80C188 processor, which is a 16 bit processor and I found an Analog Devices replacement for one version of the 80C188 which includes an integrated DRAM refresh controller. The datasheet is kind of ambiguous about whether that's an added/new feature or something that was present in the original version of the chip that they're imitating. Was there an AMD/Intel version of the 80188 with an integrated DRAM refresh controller?

I would guess the ROM on the back side contains code for the 80188, unless the thing has internal ROM.

I'm also not sure the 4 bit DRAM is being used by it the 80C188, but it seems like a good bet.
 

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