Also, there were some switches that had 8 RJ45 ports an a BNC one, if you MUST use 10 base 2 (I.e. with a printer that only had coaxial).
If you want to connect that 286 to a network, a RJ45 ISA card will be cheaper and easier to find than any converter or old switch.
I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got 5-pin DIN.
Roland addict and founding member of the Association Of Molex Haters
wrote:Good old vampire taps. :D […]
wrote:some kind of spikes or something.
Good old vampire taps. 😁
wrote:How do you connect such a card to a modern ethernet network?
You might be able to find an ancient ethernet hub that has both kinds of connectors? I know I've seen a few at work while doing some spring cleaning. Note that those are hubs, not switches. I'm not even sure switches existed back then.
They're pretty easy to find if you do some searching:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/5-port-10-Mbps-Ether … ucAAOSwVA5aMKjh
The crazy thing is that the el-cheapo $20 Negear en104 that had bncs (I have 3 of them since we couldn't afford anything more expensive) are now going for $100 on ebay. 😲 At one point, I actually contemplated getting rid of these, but they are very handy for examining traffic since they are just a hub and not a switch, and the bnc on the back easily connects 10Base2 to 10BaseT networks. And interesting fact is that those Ethernet activity lights that are right on the port first debuted on these models.
Switches existed as well, but like all switches back then, they weren't cheap--we bought the cheapest at $900/ea (!) for 8 switched 10Mb (one with BNC and AUI) and two 100Mb uplink ports. I actually tested these in the last few years and thought the 100Mb ports were bad until I remembered years later that there was no auto configuration of speed/duplex on these (no one had auto-negotiation except nways, and hence it was called nways auto-negotiation for many years before it became an Ethernet spec) and that it had to be set manually. I'll have to retest when I have time as I'm sure it still works great. All the 10Mb ports were great on the previous test, including the bnc. Full-duplex was set by a dip switch on the back of the unit on a per port basis. I actually have them both hooked to each other via BNC and one connected to our network via a 10Mb port. It's interesting to see Internet speeds at 6Mb when your connection is 100Mb+. Just goes to show the overhead.
wrote:As far as vintage networking gear goes, I kinda wonder if anyone here is still screwing around with the more exotic ones like Token Ring, ARCnet or TCNS
There are, and I have 3 Token Ring MAUs as well as some cards and some systems that have cards in them that I plan to play with. The cool thing is that in w95 (maybe even higher), you could bridge between token-ring and ethernet so you could connect everything together. Speeds were interesting on token-ring and it always felt a bit faster than 10Mbit.
As far as connecting that 30-286 to a network, if that card is already showing up and configured, I wouldn't touch it. The 30-286 could be quite particular with hardware and not play well. You'd have a much easier time just picking up a hub with a bnc. 😎
