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Divide by Zero error MacSE and appletalk sharing.

robbo007

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
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287
Location
Iberian Peninsula
Hi,
I've got a Mac SE (system 6.08 and I'm connecting over the printer port to my Power PC G3 (MacOS 9.2) via apple talk. On the G3 I have file sharing and appletalk enabled. On my MAC SE I see the G3 under chooser and the share. I the moment I authenticate with the user I get an error: Divide by Zero and have to restart. I can see the user connects on the G3 as its listed in the connected users tab of the share.

Any ideas why its bombing out? I gather I can't do this the other way around. Connect via Appletalk to the SE from the G3? I don't see any file sharing option under System 6.08.

Thanks,
 
There should be another control panel for setting up sharing on top of the Appletalk fluff for Chooser.
Do you have any other applications running when attempting to connect beyond the Finder?
 
You may have to use different versions of MacOS to be able to use Appletalk between both machines. IIRC, Appletalk in System 6 wasn't really very compatible with Appletalk from System 7 and definitely not from System 9.x

When I use Appletalk between my SE and PowerPC machines, I have System 7.1.1 and 8.6.1 and it works fine. The downside of System 7 on an SE is that you lose compatibility with really old 24 bit only software, and System 7 uses more RAM.
 
There's the Network Access Disk from Apple, which boots into a very small System 7.5 only to access network shares. Might be worth a try. (may not support the SE, however)
 
Thanks, Yeah I did not want to loose the older compatibility so that's why I'm using 6.x. These are the photos of my options.
 

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Appletalk in System 6 wasn't really very compatible with Appletalk from System 7 and definitely not from System 9.x
Unless you have something to back that up I'm calling that out as untrue. I've had system 5, system 6, system 7 AND GS/OS all connected over serial Appletalk at the same time to the same server running System 7 without connection issues. There should be nothing in the Appletalk spec that makes it incompatible with newer or older versions of the macOS for basic file sharing.
 
Maybe just System 6 to MacOS 9 is an issue..? Doesn't Appletalk assign random numbers as the client ID? Maybe MacOS 9 gives a number too large for what System 6 would expect, causing it to overflow and run into the divide-by-zero error.

As suggested, try booting with the NAD.
 
I'll try and hunt down a NAD 800k. MY drive is not a super drive :(

One thing though. I can connect to a CDROM via AppleTalk which I have inserted in the G3. Its only the HardDisk that seems to give the divide error. I've tried copying the file permissions for my user again but the same results.
 
Too bad with the 800k drive.

But good info. Maybe the hard disk is larger than the max. volume size supported by System 6?
 
I'll try and hunt down a NAD 800k. MY drive is not a super drive :(

You can make 800k disks by taping over the capacity hole on a HD floppy. It's directly opposite of the R/W slider on the floppy. I use this trick to make 800k disks for older macs. I don't remember if OS 9 supports writing to 800k disks, you may have to go back to 8.6.1 or 8.1. You can also use the same trick on a Windows PC if you want to write an 800k disk image with Winimage.

One thing though. I can connect to a CDROM via AppleTalk which I have inserted in the G3. Its only the HardDisk that seems to give the divide error. I've tried copying the file permissions for my user again but the same results.

Maybe the partition is too large on the hard drive. The original HFS can only work with partitions up to 2 GB. You may try adding another drive to your G3 and making a partition less than 2 GB in size to use it for transfering stuff to your older macs.
 
Any ideas why its bombing out?
Bad RAM? Bad system install?

One place I worked at many many years ago had an SE that would crash within minutes of being powered on. So I brought in my long torx driver, removed the SIMMs, burnished the contacts with a pencil eraser, brushed off the eraser dust (do not breathe on it, you will get moisture on it), then firmly re-seated them. It didn't randomly crash after that.
 
To be able to share files from the Mac SE using System 6 there is a shareware program called EasyShare Demo that will allow you to demo the software by sharing 1 folder for a limited time. Mac OS 9 will be able to login to it and access files or save files depending on privileges.

On the other hand to be able to access Mac OS 9.2.2 with the Mac SE using System 6, you will need to install AppleShare Workstation 3.5.
The Volume that you are logging onto on the G3 with the Mac SE should be less than 2 GBs and preferably formatted in HFS not HFS+.
A disk images is a great use for this. You create a disk image on the G3, formatted HFS, less than 2 GB, mount it and share it.
The Mac SE will be able to access that share without the error.
Will you be connecting via Ethernet or via LocalTalk.?
 
This is the solution:

On your Power Mac G3, use Disk Copy to create a smaller disk image, say 20 MB or 40 MB. Mount this image on the desktop, then use Get Info to enable File Sharing for it.

On the Chooser on the Mac SE, select this volume.

The problem is that your hard disk is too large for the older software on your Mac SE.
 
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