A Powerbook 1400 talks to a Linux box (and actually hears back)

It was my initial frustration with just getting my Powerbook 1400cs to work at all with the "modern" World Wide Web and Internet e-mail that led me to abandon the project (and the resulting This Old Mac blog for the infinitely greener pastures of Linux and BSD on older, cheaper, more-compliant PC (as in IBM-PC, or Windows and MS-DOS compatible) hardware.

But I never forgot about the Powerbook 1400. Sure, I didn't take it out of the bag for over a year, but when I got it in my head that I could use the Powerbook not as a stand-alone Linux box (the only alternative for this vintage of PowerPC-equipped Mac being MkLinux, a distro as dead as can be and not even downloadable) but as a terminal with my many Debian, OpenBSD and various other Linux/Unix setups.

I did get to the point where I had wired and even wireless networking on the Powerbook, and with the most modern browser I could find (the hard-to-get Netscape Communicator 4.8), I could kind of, sort of use the Powerbook with the Macintosh System 7.6.1 for basic Web browsing. Before I go on, everything I know about 7.6.1 I learned from the fine people at System 7 Today, a terrific resource for anybody thinking of running an old Mac on System 7.

That's where I got MacSSH, which, not coincidentally, I managed to configure today to run an SSH session over the local network with my Debian Etch box. First of all, read the documentation for MacSSH. I had to create a "Favorite" for my Debian box, and part of that was creating the SSH keys.

Once I turned off compression and selected MD5 authentication, the connection began working. I typed in the password for my SSH key when the Mac prompted me (I picked a long password, unfortunately). As the MacSSH documentation suggested, I entered my account name for the Debian box, but not the password.

I was prompted for that, and upon entering it, I was in a Debian shell.

Basic commands worked fine, as did the Lynx text-only Web browser. I could even post to LXer.

Things seemed to get a little hinky when using vi and nano to edit configuration files, and I couldn't get the function keys to work (and they're kind of essential for Nano, at least).

And while running X on a computer with a 117-or-so-MHz PPC processor and 48 MB of RAM. But I'd like to try.

See, I get an old Powerbook to actually run a console session with a real, live Linux box, and already I want to get X on a machine that in all likelihood can't handle it.

But I've already got quite a few leads on how to get an X server running, mostly for OS 9, but a few that just might work in System 7.

And while I'm at it, I got into System 7.6.1 and couldn't remember how to open a text editor. I didn't want to use MS Word (which I do have, and which is slow as anything, even though it's the PowerPC build), WriteNow (very quick, but can't make credible text files).

It took me a minute or so to remember SimpleText. I'm not sure whether or not I'm actually generating ASCII text, but it is quick, and yes, simple.

Anyhow, my initial wish, when this project began a few days ago, was to connect to a Linux or BSD box via serial port. I got a cable that connects that weird round printer/modem port on the Powerbook 1400 to a DB9 serial port. I don't know whether or not it's a "null modem" cable, so I also got one of those at Fry's for a couple bucks, with an adapter to get the genders right on the DB9-DB25 connection.

The only problem is that I can't seem to turn the Mac serial port on. I think I do have it. It has something to do with TCP/IP, but if I do turn on the serial port, I think I'll lose the connectivity I have over Ethernet with my PowerPort Platinum card. So since MacSSH is working, I'll stick with it.

I still wouldn't mind getting Zterm to work over the serial port, since I wouldn't even have to open up SSH if I didn't want to (although I would have to enable serial connectivity, which I've done on the Linux end already).

But just getting a 12-year-old, pretty-much-obsolete Macintosh to even run as a terminal with a modern Linux system is a great thing. (Somewhat ironically, but not really, the Powerbook would be less obsolete, I figure, if it had an older Motorola processor; then I'd have a snowball's chance of installing Linux or BSD on it, since many distros still support Motorola 68000 CPUs.)

So I'll play with MacSSH for a few days and bask in the glory of actually finding something useful for the Powerbook 1400 to do. OK ... I could just, you know, use the keyboard connected to the actual Linux box itself, but what's the fun in that?

Before I go: MacSSH seems to die when the Powerbook's screensaver turns on. No big deal, just an observation. The app itself doesn't die, but the session does.

(Note: This entry was written with SimpleText in Mac System 7.6.1. It was then copied and pasted into a file with Nano, running via MacSSH, in Debian Etch. I then started an X session over SSH on my Windows box with PuTTY and Xming, then ran Geany and Iceweasel (aka Firefox) to copy and paste the entry into Movable Type, after which you see it here. Byzantine, yes, but that's part of the whole geek thing. One thing I will say is that the PuTTY/Xming combination is a great way to run X sessions over SSH from Windows boxes. I'd love for the same thing to be true with Mac System 7.6.1, or even OS 8.5 or 9, to which I'm reluctant to upgrade, but I'm not holding out hope, although I will now start looking for MacX 1.1.7, something Apple shipped with A/UX, to further my quest.)