TailTalk is designed as a "toolkit" for building fully userspace AppleTalk implementations on Linux, Mac OS and Windows systems via EtherTalk or LocalTalk networks. It is built from scratch with zero dependencies on Netatalk or any kernel drivers - All it needs is a raw socket and/or TashTalk compatible device (for LocalTalk) and patience for grumpy old computers. It provides a complete AppleTalk stack, with multiple copies of it able to run on the same machine at the same time.
I started this project to be able to copy files to/from my old Macs, print to LaserWriters, ImageWriters and networked StyleWriters, and be able to write modern async software to communicate with them. Currently TailTalk only works in a routerless setup - work is in progress to make it gracefully join router present networks but it is not yet in the mainline code.
Each part of the stack is meant to be as "zero config" as possible, just like running on a Mac of the era. Just plug it in, launch and things should just work without any fuss.
This project is very much a work in progress prototype, so expect bugs and missing features.
This is the current user facing program for use with TashTalk USB. It includes an AFP server which should work with just about every Mac that shipped with a LocalTalk port. It also can import Stuff-It archives and floppy disk images and load them in to the share path preserving the resource forks and make them available to remote clients.
It additionally supports sharing LocalTalk capable LaserWriters, ImageWriters and StyleWriters to modern networks as AirPrint / IPP printers, and sharing modern printers to classic Macs. The latest release can be found here:
https://github.com/FeralFirmware/TailTalk/releases/latest
Packet parsers and fully async APIs for almost all the major AppleTalk protocols.
- AppleTalk Address Resolution Protocol (AARP)
- Datagram Delivery Protocol (DDP)
- Name Binding Protocol (NBP)
- AppleTalk Transaction Protocol (ATP)
- Printer Access Protocol (PAP)
- AppleTalk Session Protocol (ASP)
- AppleTalk Filing Protocol (AFP)
- AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol
It additionally supports running with TashTalk for LocalTalk Macs.
The AARP/DDP underlay can run either in-process (the default) or in a shared
daemon, tailtalkd, which owns the interfaces and serves DDP sockets,
addressing, and routing rules to multiple clients over a protobuf protocol on
a Unix or UDP socket — usable from TailTalk (TalkStack::builder().daemon_unix(..))
or plain C clients. See docs/daemon-protocol.md.
This project requires Rust 1.90 or above, which can be installed from rustup.rs. This should install a matching compiler for your OS and CPU architecture by default.
This project uses cargo-packager for building AppImage for Linux, and App bundles
for macOS and installers for Windows. Install it with cargo install cargo-packager.
Ensure you have the Windows MSVC prerequisites installed as specified in the rustup book.
Windows requires the npcap SDK to be saved somewhere on your machine. It is available at npcap.com. Point a LIB environment variable to the folder where you unzipped the SDK, such as:
C:\npcap-sdk-1.13\Lib\x64
Once the prerequisites are installed, run cargo build --release from the root of this repository to build everything, or for just the
TailTail GUI run cargo build -p tailtalk-gui --release.
After building the binaries should be located at target/release/.
Then run the following based on your OS:
# Linux
cargo packager --release -f appimage -p tailtalk-gui
# macOS
cargo packager --release -p tailtalk-gui
# Windows
cargo packager --release -f nsis -p tailtalk-gui
The resulting bundle will be placed in dist/.
Quick start guide: Setup.md
TashTalk USB uses a Silicon Labs CP210x USB-to-UART bridge (VID 10c4, PID ea60).
The cp210x kernel module is likely installed already but by default the device node is only accessible by root. To grant your user
access without requiring root, create a udev rule:
echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="10c4", ATTRS{idProduct}=="ea60", TAG+="uaccess"' \
| sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/99-tashtalk-usb.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm triggerAfter running these commands, unplug and re-plug the TashTalk USB device. It will appear as /dev/ttyUSB0 (or
similar) and be accessible without root.
Install the CP210x VCP Windows driver from Silicon Labs.
Install npcap 1.88 from npcap.com
macOS 11 and later includes support for the CP2102N USB chip out of the box. For 10.12 through 10.15 the driver from Silicon Labs is required for the device to be recognised: https://www.silabs.com/software-and-tools/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers?tab=downloads
EtherTalk is compiled into the GUI by default on macOS, where libpcap ships with the OS. On Linux and Windows it is opt-in:
build with cargo build -p tailtalk-gui --features ethertalk once libpcap (libpcap-dev) or the npcap SDK is installed.
Packet capture and injection go through /dev/bpf*, which is root-only out of the box. To use EtherTalk as a regular user,
install the ChmodBPF package that ships inside the Wireshark disk image (or run brew install --cask wireshark-chmodbpf).
It creates an access_bpf group, hands the BPF devices to it, and adds you to the group.
Group membership only applies to new login sessions, so log out and back in afterwards. Until then, and if ChmodBPF is not installed at all, the GUI hides the Ethernet Interface picker rather than offering a transport that would fail to start.
There are 4 demo programs I have written to verify the functionality of this software as I have developed it:
- aep-echo - A simple echo program that sends an echo request to a target address and prints the response time.
- afp-server - An AFP 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 compatible AFP server. Very much a work in progress but is capable of reading and writing files to classic Mac systems. Basic directory browsing and file operations are supported.
- nbp-lookup - Performs an NBP lookup based on the provided request string and returns the results
- pap-print - Sends a PostScript file to a PAP printer. Aimed at LaserWriters, and have only tested on my own 4/600 PS.
- tailtalkd - The TailTalk underlay daemon. Owns the physical AppleTalk interfaces and serves DDP sockets, addressing, and routing to client applications over a Unix/UDP socket.
- tailtalk-gui - A simple GUI for sharing a folder as a volume over EtherTalk and/or LocalTalk (via TashTalk).
All of the examples run a complete copy of the stack using a raw socket (if EtherTalk is enabled) and thus need to be run as root, or the appropriate setcap applied to the compiled binary (on macOS, ChmodBPF instead, see EtherTalk). If only using TashTalk then this is not required.
Beyond unit tests I have found the best way to test this software is with real hardware. My current test setup consists of:
- Linux machine running TailTalk
- PowerBook G3 running Mac OS 9.2 via Ethernet
- LaserWriter 4/600 PS via AsanteTalk
- Color StyleWriter 2200 via EtherTalk adapter
- ImageWriter II with the LocalTalk Option Card
- Macintosh SE/30 running System 7.1 via AsanteTalk
- Macintosh Classic running System 6.0.8 via AsanteTalk
When the AsanteTalk is first powered on it "listens" for incoming packets on the Ethernet side before choosing what EtherTalk phase to operate under. If it doesn't see any EtherTalk Phase 2 packets it will default to Phase 1. TailTalk supports Phase 1 and this works just fine for LaserWriters, NBP and some basic operations but does not work with AFP (The Mac will discover the AFP TailTalk server but our responses appear to be dropped).
I'd love to see this project grow into something that can be used to build more complete AppleTalk implementations. All contributions are welcome, but please open an issue first to discuss the changes you'd like to make. Additionally Pull Requests should mention what systems the change was verified against. This project has made me realise how quirky old systems are.
This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.