Alright, I know you all want to use the native 10BASE2 physical media with your VAX. Of course, your home network has twisted pair, i.e. 100BASE-T or 1000BASE-T. Well, for quite a while I used a transceiver on the AUI port on the back of my VAXstations. With this setup, I could connect directly to my home network. One of the transceivers was a little flaky though and wouldn’t connect to the network after bootup. I’d have to unplug it and plug it back in.
And there’s that nagging urge to use 10BASE2. So, I spent a while looking at protocol converters from companies like Black Box, but they were over $100. Then I stumbled on a Netgear hub called an EN104. It’s a 4 port hub with a coax connector on the back for a 5th port. I Iooked on eBay and, yup, over $100. Give me a break – this is old obsolete stuff you know. Be careful too. You might find one for $20, but odds are it’s an EN104TP which doesn’t have the coax port.
So, I looked up the CentreCom equivalent, an RH505BE. Only $15 on eBay and I can ditch the transceivers. Now I have a 10BASE2 segment with two VAXen and one PC connected to my 1000BASE-T network!
VAXstation stuff 
So nice. At one point, in my home network I had 10XbasetT+coaxial(10b2)+ethernet&appletalk over phonenet, just for the sake of it. A couple of Shiva Fastpath 4 bridges and an Allied Telesis CentreCom 3008SL 8 port 10b2 repeater from AUI did the trick. I got all of these for free… specifically, from the trash of the ECE department at the university. And, one nice thing about the Shiva bridge is that the ethernet side could be either AUI or 10b2.
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Nice network! Dumpster diving is great for getting free computer stuff. Most of my VAX stuff was obtained that way, although I’ve done some upgrading via eBay. The sad thing is that in 2017 very little vintage hardware is left to be thrown out by people who see it as junk.
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Sadly, you are totally right. I’ve been pondering what to do with my VS-2000… it is running 5.5 with Wolfgang Moeller’s pk2k, but it only has 6MB of RAM. I so want an MS-400CA RAM board, but nowadays they are very expensive. I wish I had been more proactive about getting one 20 years ago. And my VS4000/60 needs power supply re-capping… I need more free time.
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Oh no, a few years back I got rid of my VS2000s! They all had 14MB (or 12 I can’t remember) memory cards and the ‘pizza box’ expansion enclosure on the bottom. I have some original VS2000 documentation I can scan if I can’t find it at bitsavers. For the power supply check used prices. For my VS3100’s, a used supply was cheaper than recapping…of course I may have just been lucky too.
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After a few days of random system crashing in the 4000/60, I think that the caps regenerated enough that it is not crashing anymore! Also, I played with the 2000. .. installed 5.5-2 in a different scsi disk, and went back and completed the scsi hardware hack by adding an external scsi connector in the back. However … I failed in trying to clone the original 5.5.0 disk to a larger (3rd party) disk; when initializing it, I get the “%INIT-F-DRVERR, fatal drive error” caused by an “INVALID MODE SENSE DATA RETURNED” scsi error; this, on two different disks. Those 3rd party incompatibiiities… On another issue: which is the appropriate version of DEC C, CXX and fortran to go along with 5.5-2? I successfully installed fort066, but cc064, aacrt060 fail the Installation Verification Procedure, and cxx056 doesn’t even install… it would seem that the libraries in these newer products really can’t work along with 5.5-2 .
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My cheat sheet says the following versions should work with VMS 5.5-2
C from 5.3 to 6.4
C++ 5.3 to 5.6C
Fortran 6.5 and 6.6
You could try older versions of C and C++, but before that, check the installation instructions. There’s certain system resources that need to be set to a specific value called a quota. If these aren’t set correctly, installs can fail. The installation guides will tell you what they need to be set to for each software package and version.
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Oh and the SCSI, from what I’ve read, the 2000s had a somewhat non-standard implementation. The 3100s were better but still had a boot drive size limitation. All Seagate drives I’ve tried work on my 3100s…maybe I was lucky. I have an IBM drive though that won’t work.
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I’ve got an old Linksys EWHUB, that has a BNC connector on the back. However, my VAXstation 4000 VLCs have thicknet connectors on the back, so still using the thick to 10baseT transceiver.
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You could try using an A09-DECXM or DESTA 70-22782-01 AUI to coax transceiver. Might need a cable between the VAXstation and transceiver. I haven’t tried these because I have a coax port on the back of my 3100, so going direct to coax was cleaner for me.
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