Using A Global Village Bronze Modem on A Mac Plus

 

 

I have successfully interfaced a Global Village Teleport Bronze II modem

to a Mac Plus.

The GlobalFax Bronze II modem was bundled with Performas some time ago.

They look almost identical to the Teleport 56K modems Global Village is

currently shipping. Though nifty looking, the Bronze is an almost

minimally useful 2400 baud - good only for chat and e-mail - but the fax

portion is 9600 baud which is the fastest most fax machines support.

Not only are these old modems nifty looking that can be useful too. I

have set up three of my trailing-edge friends with old toaster Macs, a

Teleport Bronze II, and a separate screen-name on my main AOL account.

The problem with using these modems on a Plus is they get their power

>from the ADB (keyboard/mouse) port, not found on the poor old Plus.

There are two ways to get this power:

>From the (presumably unused) floppy connector

>From the keyboard cable

(The floppy connector idea came from another classic-mac correspondent,

and I must say it is a bit more elegant than my approach.)

I made a special keyboard cable that tapped the +5 volt power from the

Plus keyboard cable to a ADB connector (sold as a S-video connector at

Radio Shack.)

Here are the instructions to make the cable: - Remove the keyboard cable

>from the Plus.

- Looking from the cord end of one of these connectors you will see the

four wires, yellow, green, red, black. Here's how the connector looks

when viewed from the cord end:

(Use non-proportional font)

      ___
     |   |
 ____|   |____
|             |
| Yl Gn Rd Bk |
|             |
|_____________|

- Cut the outer insulating jacket about one inch from one of the two

connectors.

- Cut insulation from the yellow and black wires. Solder a two foot long

red wire to the keyboard cable's yellow wire. Solder a two foot long

black wire to the keyboard cable's black wire.

- Get a female mini-din (S-video) connector. Viewing from the solder end,

you'll notice the pins arranged in a trapezoid pattern.

o o

o o (solder end view)

- Solder the red wire to the upper left pin. Solder the black wire to the

upper right pin

r b

o o (solder end view)

- Insulate all your splices.

- Plug the keyboard cable in with the splices closest to the Mac Plus

system unit.

- Plug the Bronze II into the modem port and the other modem cable into

the s-video cable.

You now have a snazzy-looking 2400 baud modem attached to your Plus. But

wait. There's more! The fax software bundled with the Performa will work

with the Plus, but the hot ticket is to use the fax software bundled with

the Teleport Platinum. This software is slick as can be. If you read a

review on Global Village modems, the reviewer invariably raves about how

nice the fax software is. If you install this latest fax software on a

machine equipped with a Teleport Bronze, the Teleport control panel even

correctly identifies the Bronze!

Kudos to Global Village to continue supporting dinosaur equipment so

well. It gives me some confidence that GV will continue to support

products I buy today some years down the road. It also results in more

sales for GV because I was so impressed with the GV Bronze and its

software, that I bought a GV Platinum and an GV X2 for my 8500s.

Mike Friese

http://mike.friese.com/