
Building a 10BASE5 “Thick Ethernet” Network - omnibrain
http://tech.mattmillman.com/projects/10base5/
======
jacquesm
There are some technologies from not all that long ago that I'm really happy
are truly dead and in no particular order coax based ethernet and token ring
are amongst those.

Building those networks was doable (with the right tools), but debugging them
was an absolute nightmare. Good riddance.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_Good riddance._

This can't be overemphasized. Both 10BASE5 and 10BASE2 were a "shared medium".
Everyone connected to the same cable. It really was "an absolute nightmare" to
debug.

There were no hubs and/or switches to isolate users from each other.

~~~
shabble
I don't know if they existed in the early days, but when 10Base-T got popular
both hubs & switches would often have a 10Base-2 segment interface or two as
well.

I'm fairly sure there was some possibility of segment isolation, because
people thieving BNC terminators (seriously, they're like crack to schoolkids,
along with mouse-balls) would drop off chunks of the network, but not the
entire thing.

I guess it could have just been multiple NICs in the server, though.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_I 'm fairly sure there was some possibility of segment isolation_

This discussion seems to have died off, but here's some stuff I dug up mostly
from Wiki (it's been so many years since I was directly involved with any of
it):

    
    
       10BASE5 could be a max length of 500 meters
       and have up to 100 nodes
    
       The 10BASE5 cable must be one linear run;
       T-connections are not allowed.
    
       10BASE2 could be a max length of 185 meters
       and have up to 30 nodes
    

So there was need for some "segment isolation" as you call it. A single
Ethernet would have multiple segments (all activity fully visible on all
segments), because given the restrictions on physically routing the network
cables around, it wasn't possible to connect everyone in even a relatively
small building to a single segment. E.g. 185 meters isn't much when it has to
be snaked around the backs of desks and around the perimeters of rows of
cubicles.

There were devices called "repeaters" (originally very dumb two-port
amps/isolators) that would connect segments of the same Ethernet. IIRC you
could even connect a 10BASE5 segment to a 10BASE2 segment.

You were limited to how many segments you could have overall, and limited in
overall distance to IIRC about 1500 meters for pure 10BASE5. Every packet was
visible everywhere else, it was all a single "collision domain". The distance
limitation had to do with all devices needing to observe a collision within a
certain amount of time (active transmitters were monitoring the wire to see if
any other packet collided with theirs). CSMA/CD protocol meant all active
transmitters would stop sending and "back off" an exponentially increasing
random amount of time when they detected a collision.

Combine all that with "quirky" Ethernet controller chips for even more fun.

I sure don't miss any of that. Thankfully those memories have faded over time.

------
pjc50
I still have a 3C905B handy. Those and the NE2000 were fantastic for Just
Working in Linux. I think I still have some 10BASE2 "N" coax terminators and
T-pieces too. All this kit was first used to play DOOM multiplayer in the
mid-90s under MS-DOS using the Novell IPX drivers.

All of these technologies are now dead, except Doom.

Edit: it's kept in a box with a 56k modem, an ISA Action Replay, a
Soundblaster 16, a Trident video card, and a loose Cyrix processor.

~~~
shabble
I still have a bunch somewhere. I got quite excited at the 'going for an
outrageous sum on ebay' quote, but sadly they're only ~£5 each.

The NE2000's were the bane of our lanparties. Super cheap, and about as
reliable as a politicians promise. They wouldn't just stop working, they'd
stop _everything else_ working.

Now that I think about it, I can probably still claim to have an SLI gaming
rig (12MB Voodoo II's), if I could find something to put them in.

~~~
chinpokomon
I have an Obsidian X-24... So I guess I do too!

------
jamescun
Cached:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://tech.mattmillman.com/projects/10base5/)

------
phs2501
Well this certainly brings back (not so) fond memories of trying to figure out
why the .200 net was down only to find that the intern has somehow yet again
kicked apart the 10base2 tee behind his computer.

Really, really not missing physical bus topology networks.

------
lukeh
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8514169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8514169)

------
FrankenPC
If you remember this, then you also probably remember IBM's 4Mb token ring.
Talk about proprietary. Even the cables used really weird and proprietary
connectors.

------
Avernar
Arcnet was my first network at home. Bought four cards and a passive hub for
$50 from a friends father's company upgrading to ethernet. We used it for
playing Doom and Duke Nukem in my basement.

Then we upgraded to 10base2 once the cards came down in price. Then finally
the 4 port 10baseT hubs with a 10base2 uplink dropped in price. We had a 10
player game of Duke Nukem one night in my basement.

But up until now I have never seen a 10base5 network.

~~~
digi_owl
Was the go to guy for networking for the local boys for some years. I may
still have a few 10baseT and 10base2 devices sitting around somewhere.

Craziest i manage to set up was a combo of baseT and base2 that got extended
in real time as more people piled in for the weekend.

------
Gracana
I remember helping out at my elementary school, where we had LocalTalk (RS422
with upstream and downstream cabling using special self-terminating adapters)
and thinnet, with a Power Macintosh 5200 (or something similar) as a bridge in
between. It ran fairly well, but troubleshooting issues on bus networks was
tricky.

~~~
zdw
The even cheaper version of LocalTalk was Farallon's PhoneNet, which used
cheap and available RJ11 phone cables rather than the more expensive Apple
DB-3 connectors, and a terminator on each end that was basically a resistor
crimped into an RJ11.

~~~
Avernar
So that was what the classroom networks in highschool were. The PCs had cards
with the two RJ11 connectors and I remember the terminators that the
troublemakers would loosen.

The backbone network and teachers network were token ring. Those connectors
were huge.

~~~
dfox
That could as well be ARCNet which in addition to coax also supported single-
pair Cat3 cables. From ARCnet cars I've seen I assume that pair of RJ11's was
standard connector for that.

------
sgt
This is very cool.

Also check this out - at a "mere" 490 USD you can buy a 10BaseT to 10Base2
converter kit, USB based.
[http://www.icsaero.com/products/groundtest/lantap-10](http://www.icsaero.com/products/groundtest/lantap-10)

------
FrankenPC
I worked on those. Anything was better than Arcnet. The painful part was
dealing with the "frozen yellow cable". Really thick and unwieldy stuff.

------
ams6110
I remember those large yellow coax cables from back in the day. I never knew
they were vampire tapped.

------
rplst8
> Fast forward to 2012, and 10BASE5 is now truly a vintage technology. Anyone
> studying a computer science degree will at some point have been told about
> this stuff, because it’s very important in the history of computing.

10BASE5 is not computer science.

~~~
mwfunk
No one said it was, including in that quote.

~~~
rplst8
I think that some connection was implied. Why else mention it?

