28 Apr
2011
28 Apr
'11
8:07 p.m.
All,
On 29 April 2011 10:42, Charles Dickman <chd at chdickman.com> wrote:
I need an ethernet converter between 10base2 and
100baseT.
I am using a DECserver90TL as a console server. The DECserver is 10base2
ethernet, so it has a BNC connector and I use coax to connect to an ethernet
hub. I was using a hub that had both 10baseT and 10base2 to connect it to my
100baseT network, but the hub has suddenly become unidirectional. A
lightening strike killed a few things in my house and now I see this hub
might be another.
eBay only finds me two items like this. One seems over priced and the other
says it is for parts only.
Do I have any other options?
I am in the process of setting up something to do exactly the same
thing, to the point where I am likely to need the boot image for the
DECserver really soon now. My approach is somewhat not optimal but
I'll describe it for the purposes of entertaining the people here.
Amongst the collection of stuff I have includes a couple of elderly
Sparc boxes. My ADSL modem/router will happily serve up files from a
USB attached external disk, appearing as a windows share (or whatever
the correct windows terminology is). I wish to also plug in a large
HDD and make this available via NFS to the other Unix boxes I own. I
am also guessing that I am going to need a MOP server for the boot
image for the DECserver.
So, here goes. I have an SS20 (2 x Sparc CPUS). I have recently
(arrived last week) got the 100MB hme SBus card for it - which seems
to work and NetBSD is able to talk to it. The SS20 has an old install
of NetBSD installed on it. I am currently in the process of upgrading
to 5.1 (I think) via tape (DLT) as I have a couple of DLT drives and
tapes stashed away.
The plan is to use the SS20 running NetBSD to convert between 100BaseT
and 10BaseT. There is 10BaseT externally but I don't have any of the
tranceivers with the small AUI connectors to fit the back of the SS20.
The SBus ethernet card with the 10Base2 connector on it does not fit
the SS20 at all well. :( So, the SS20 will be bridging ports, mounting
with windows file systems and hopefully exporting the filesystem as
NFS. There is some other stuff I want to run on the SS20 as well but
that is for later.
Some years ago, I picked up a couple of Sun IPX boxes and purchased
the 64MB of RAM to max them out. The IPX houses the SBus 10Base2
Ethernet card happily and also has a real AUI socket on the back where
I can use real tranceivers. The plan is to install OpenBSD on the IPX,
run it as a MOP server and connect it, back to back, to the SS20 using
10BaseT. I should then be able to get the DECServer running on the
10Base2.
My only concern is that I am running some infrastructure on elderly
hardware. I am not running this 24x7 so I am not necessarily concerned
about the efficiency.
Simon
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to
philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is
the utility of the final product."
Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh