Posted 2025-11-13 | Back to blog index
Welcome to the latest addition to GlobalTalk
This little guy, the IO-DATA LANDISK HDL-G160U, showed up on my Mercari saved search for "AppleTalk", as the description listed “Supported protocols: Windows(TCP/IP)、Macintosh(AppleTalk)”. Checking the mfr page, it was introduced in 2005 and also listed compatibility back to Mac OS 8.1.
Now I was curious, was it really AppleTalk or just AppleShare IP?
He arrived today, and sure enough, it's true-blue AppleTalk!
And of course, it turns out that internally it's just a Linux box running netatalk…
Despite the specs saying it requires MacOS 8.1, I can connect fine to it from a machine running System 7.5.3, so either that requirement is just because they had nothing else to test with, or because you need a new enough browser for the configuration UI.
Anyway, it should be on GlobalTalk now so if anyone is bored see if you can connect!
Anyway this might actually turn out to be kind of practical since right now I use my NAS to transfer files and that only does AppleShare IP, which is slightly annoying to connect to (have to mess around with the "enter server address” button in Chooser and aliases that tend to corrupt themselves)
It also does SMB which works fine from Tahoe and FTP which I haven't tested yet
It also has USB ports; you can either share USB drives, or dump files off of USB drives by pressing a front panel button