On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 04:05:36PM -0400, der Mouse wrote:
> >> There is no such thing as a 10base5 <-> 10base2 transceiver, really.
> >> If you mean an AUI <-> 10base2 transceiver
> > I guess I mean AUI; I really don't know anything about hardware from
> > that era :-)
> 
> :-)
> 

<snip (thanks for the education, I appreciate it:)>

> Your "10base5 switch", from your description, is something I've never
> seen.

I'll try to describe it as accurately as possible. It's a big, 3 or 4 U (I'm
thinking 3) machine that looks almost like a PC from the back. When opened
up, it has fifteen cards that resemble ISA but are not ISA. Each card has an
AUI connector (the same you'd see on, say, an old sparcstation, where
you'd toss the 10baseT transceiver.) Tranceivers don't fit on them only due
to the fact that the connectors on the cards are made for screws, not
slides. So I'm using some 1' cables to go to transceivers. Right now, I've
got a 10baseT transceiver on it running 10baseT to my IBM switch, and a
10base2 transceiver on it hooked up to the DECstation.

I wish I could get this thing to boot. it SEEMS perfectly fine, but I get
a.out tftp err (-5) with everything I try to load. (my tftp server is
serving the files just fine, and the switches are blinking when they should
be, so I don't think it's an issue with the network or the server, I think I
just don't have the right file (or the right size file) for it.) I suppose
the hardware could be bad... I hope not, it's rather far down in the stack
of stuff, and I don't want to move all that... :P

>  There was a device that was relatively common in the AUI world,
> called a multiport, or AUI repeater, or various other such names.  This
> was a device that had one host-side AUI interface (DA15F) and a bunch
> of transceiver-side AUI interfaces (DA15Ms).  You plugged a bunch of
> hosts into the DA15Ms, and the multiport looks like a transceiver to
> each of them.  You then plugged the DA15F into a real transceiver, and
> it looks like a host to that.  What you describe as multiple DA15Fs,
> though, which means multiple host-side interfaces - it's a device you
> would connect to multiple transceivers, and I have trouble thinking
> what it could be.  It sounds like something that bridges multiple
> segments, but I hadn't thought you could do that at the AUI-interface
> level.  Obviously there's something I don't really understand (which
> isn't surprising; my knowledge of AUI is more practical than
> theoretical).

Well, beats me what it is. Kalpana EtherSwitch EPS-1500, although I doubt
Google knows more about it than I do.

-Sean