USING OPEN TRANSPORT AND OPEN TRANSPORT/PPP

With MacOS 7.6, Apple has almost completed the transition away from the older networking software for Macintosh. MacOS 8 completes the transition. In MacOS 7.6 (and 7.6.1) you can make your dial up connections to OlympusNet using the Apple Internet Dialer (part of the Apple Internet Connection Kit) or the new OpenTransport/PPP dialer (also called OT/PPP). With MacOS 8, the old Apple Internet Dialer no longer works.

If you install MacOS 8 on a disk which previously had Apple Internet Dialer installed, the installer takes over the settings you used with Apple Internet Dialer, and creates equivalent settings in a new, different application called simply Internet Dialer (no Apple in the name). This dialing program uses OT/PPP to do the dialing, but the settings are kept elsewhere and inserted into the various control panels used for dialing each time you click the Connect button. Changes to those settings are made by running the Internet Setup Assistant again. That process is not covered here...see the Help menu on your MacOS 8 system.

With any Macintosh system version from about 7.5.5 forward (and even back to 7.1, with a somewhat greater chance of problems) you can ignore the dialing software from Apple and directly use OpenTransport/PPP as your dialer. Here's how to set things up once OpenTransport and OT/PPP are installed.

You have three simple control panels to set up. Two of them can easily be reached from PPP control panel, which does the dialing. Here is the PPP control panel.

You can use the Configurations... command in the File menu to change the name in parentheses in the title bar...OlympusNet is a handy name. Put your OlympusNet email address, NOT your personal name, in the Name blank. Put your password into the Password blank and check Save password. [If your machine is not under your control, consider not checking Save password.] Use the same phone number you were using before you installed MacOS 8, or check our modem phone number list.

Although that is all the setup you have to do in this control panel, you should click the options button, click the Connection tab, and be sure that "Prompt every 5 minutes to maintain connection" and "Disconnect if idle for 10 minutes" are unchecked.

The PPP control panel is really an application...as such it has its own menus. In the PPP menu, select the top command, which is Modem... That produces this window.

Set the Connect via popup to reflect how your modem is connected to or plugged into your Macintosh. Set the Modem popup to your modem (this selects a modem script).

• Global Village Platinum users should not use the Global Village Teleport Platinum modem selection, but install the "extra" scripts and select the "GV 28.8/33.6 for ARA 2.1 OT/PPP" which that installation adds to the popup menu. See below.
• MacWarehouse "Fast Mac" users should select the "Supra 288" or "Supra 288/336" modem script.

If your modem is not listed, find the "Mac OS 8:CD Extras:Additional Modem Scripts:" folder on the MacOS 8 CD (you will have to scroll down in the "CD Extras" folder window or enlarge the window). Open that folder, and run the Installer it contains. See whether your modem is now listed in the Modem popup. If it is not, please examine the software which came with your modem for an ARA or OpenTransport Modem Script, or check with the manufacturer or the place where you purchased the modem.

When you have the Modem control panel set up, click its close box. You will be prompted to save the changes and you need to save them. When that is done, you will be back in the PPP control panel (if you are in the Finder, click on the PPP control panel window). In the PPP menu, select TCP/IP... and you will see a window like this.

You will probably have to select the "PPP" entry in the Connect via popup. That should set the Configure popup to "Using PPP Server"...if not make that selection. Fill in the "Name server addr" box as shown. You can leave the Search domains block empty.

Click the close box, and you will be prompted to save your changes. Do save the changes.

All three of these control panels have a Configurations command in the File menu...you can use that to set up additional configurations (or to rename the Default configuration to something meaningful such as OlympusNet). All three permit you to lock the settings using a password...select the User Mode command in the Edit menu and select Administration. Don't forget the password.

While a PPP connection is active, the PPP control panel shows some status information. One line of that is
Remaining time: Unlimited
That has to do with other sorts of connections...it does NOT mean that your OlympusNet account provides unlimited hours. Your account's monthly hours are as shown in
http://www.olympus.net/olympusnet/services/dialup.html.