AppleTalk Needs Crossover Cable?

Shaun James

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Nov 11, 2003, 6:13:13 AM11/11/03

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Hi,

First off all I'm new to Mac's so sorry for this dumb question.

I want to connect my new (2nd hand) PowerMac 5400 to my HP Laserjet 5M
printer. The printer has a localtalk connector in its Jetdirect network
card. Looking in a catalogue I see that you can buy a cable with 8pin
mini-din to 8pin minidin connectors for localtalk, either straight through
or with pins 1 and 6 crossed over. I know that one needs to cross over with
RS232 when connecting DTE to DTE, but one can usually tell this by the
gender of the connector. As far as I can tell, all local talk sockets are
female.

Which cable do I need?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,

Shaun James

Eric

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Nov 15, 2003, 5:52:45 AM11/15/03

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Shaun James wrote:

Don't bother with localtalk, use cat5 ethernet. If you don't have a hub,
use a X-over cable, else just plug the lot into your hub with straight
through cables.

Eric.

Henry

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Nov 18, 2003, 10:00:54 AM11/18/03

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The lines are not crossed if transformer coupled (Apple's original
solution)! You can find the circuit on the Net.
The cheapest solution is to use a "printer cable" from Apple (In this case
the RXD/TXD lines are crossed) or built it yourself:
RXD+ --> TXD+
RXD- --> TXD-
TXD+ --> RXD+
RXD- --> TXD-
GND --> GND
That's all!

Regards -
Henry

Shaun James

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Nov 20, 2003, 5:21:44 PM11/20/03

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Thanks for your help guys.

I will make a "printer cable" to try it out via localtalk, it seems to be
the simplest solution. I'll check out circuits on the web to get the din
connector pin numbers.

My 5400 does have a PCI ethernet card with 10baseT but the OS doesn't
recognise it and will not run TCP/IP. Because of this, I thought localtalk
would be a good quick way of getting the printer going seeing that I don't
know much about MacOS. The Mac originally had OS7.5 (ethernet not working)
and I have since installed more memory and OS8.1 but ethernet still does not
work.

Regards,

Shaun

Clark Martin

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Nov 29, 2003, 11:48:44 AM11/29/03

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In article <Y7bvb.19429$aT....@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
"Shaun James" <yib...@bigpond.com> wrote:

A PCI ethernet card will need drivers installed for it, the OS doesn't
have any drivers for it. The OS does install drivers for Built in, LC,
PDS and Apple's NuBus NICs but not for any PCI cards. Check with the
cards vendor for a driver.

--
Clark Martin
Redwood City, CA, USA Macintosh / Internet Consulting

"I'm a designated driver on the Information Super Highway"

Shaun James

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Dec 2, 2003, 5:57:12 AM12/2/03

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Thanks Clark. I have just got a driver from the vendor (zynx). They state
that the OS should have the driver but I'll give it a go anyway.

Thanks again,

Shaun

Clark Martin <cmn...@sonic.net> wrote in message
news:cmnews-06FFF9....@typhoon.sonic.net...

isw

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Mar 16, 2006, 1:27:34 AM3/16/06

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In article <3fba3...@news.arcor-ip.de>, "Henry" <otc_f...@gmx.net>
wrote:

Well, formally the wires don't get "crossed", and it works the same
whether there are transformers in the path or not.

In both cases, the transmit output goes to the receive input at the
other end of the cable, and vice-versa. Just like with RS-232.

See if you can find a couple of used "phonenet" couplers (should be no
more than a few bucks apiece); then you can use a plain old telephone
extension cord to connect your Mac to your printer. The advantage is
that there is no longer any risk of a "ground surge" in the power wiring
damaging the chips that connect to those wires. That can happen fairly
easily if the Mac and the printer are connected to different breakers,
for example.

Isaac