Building a Classic Mac Support Server

If you’re a classic Mac enthusiast, you know that it’s sometimes difficult to enjoy if you don’t have the right tools. Things like the choosing the right system software, the right version(s) of Stuffit Expander, and so forth. Then, getting that software to the machine can be a challenge. Floppy disks are problematic for a number of reasons. Using AppleTalk to connect your classic Mac to a modern network if challenging as support was removed years ago from MacOS X.

Luckily for us, there’s a great pre-made installation called “MacIPRpi” for Raspberry Pi. It delivers a suite of tools that are already configured and ready to use. I’ve used it for a couple of years and it’s worked great. For most folks, this will serve you well!

However, recently I’ve attempted to do certain things it couldn’t handle. This is mainly due to netatalk being updated since the image was created. This blog post contains my notes as I set out to create a newly updated version of this suite of tools from scratch.

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Hayes InterBridge

The Hayes InterBridge is “an inter-connecting ‘bridge’ that allows users of an AppleTalk network to tie into other AppleTalk networks.” This niche product was sold by Hayes in 1987 for $799 retail. There’s not a lot of information about this device left around so this page is an attempt to collect what I can find.

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