Macintosh

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On-Site / SurfNJ is happy to support customers using Apple Macintosh computers and Macintosh clones. On-Site / SurfNJ's system will support any software that will make and mainatain a PPP connection, but the setup we are most familiar with and that most people use is some combination of the MacTCP Control Panel (or Open Transport's TCP/IP Control Panel) and FreePPP software.

Macintosh computers with a Power PC chip running System 7.5.3 and above use the TCP/IP Control Panel that comes with Open Transport, Apple's latest networking strategy, instead of the MacTCP control panel. However, they still must obtain PPP software that is compatible with their system before they can connect to On-Site / SurfNJ.

Before you can determine what software you need to obtain to connect to On-Site / SurfNJ, you need to know which version of the Macintosh System your computer is running. You can find that out by going to the Apple Menu icon in the top-right corner of your screen and selecting About This Macintosh.

When you do that, you should get a window that gives you a lot of useful information, in this case we want the version of your System software (underlined in yellow):

If you have System 7.1, you need MacTCP and FreePPP.
If you have System 7.5, 7.5.1 or 7.5.2 you need to get FreePPP. MacTCP is included with System 7.5 so it should already be in your Control Panels folder.
If you have System 7.5.3 or 7.5.5 you need to get FreePPP. MacTCP is replaced by the TCP/IP control panel which is part of Open Transport.

All that remains is for you to obtain the software you need and configure it. Sounds easy, right? Well, it can be, but often isn't. There are three ways to obtain the software you'll need:

You can download it from the net. Of course you already have to be connected to the Internet for this, but many people do have connections through work or even America Online or Compuserve. If you can FTP, go to the On-Site / SurfNJ Mac Software Page, where you'll find links and direct URLs you can use to download the software.
You can get it on disk. On-Site / SurfNJ doesn't send out disk-based installers right now, but if you have a friend with an Internet connection you can have them download what you need and give it to you on floppy disks.
You can download it using a terminal emulator. Terminal emulation software is a holdover from the days of text-based interfaces to the 'net that ran over 2400 baud modems. Most modems still ship with a terminal emulator of some kind, but it's sometimes difficult to figure out which one you have. ZTerm is a decent and easy to use one, and it ships with a lot of popular Mac modems, including most Global Village models.

Once you have the software you need, you'll have to configure it for use with On-Site / SurfNJ. Check out these web pages for instructions:

FreePPP	This is the program which actually dials your phone and connects you to the system using the PPP connection protocol.
Open Transport	Apple's latest networking strategy includes a TCP/IP packet driver which can be used with FreePPP to communicate over the Internet.
MacTCP	Replaced by Open Transport, the classic Mac TCP driver is still an option on newer Macs and should be used with System 7.1 and versions of System 7.5 preceeding 7.5.3.

Once you have your software set up and you are connecting to On-Site / SurfNJ, you'll want to check out our Mac User's Page for tips and suggestions on what you can do with your Mac and On-Site / SurfNJ Internet.