[Info-vax] DE500 to DE500 woes

[Joe Bloggs]

On Sun, 27 Nov 2011 02:15:06 -0800 (PST), urbancamo <mark at wickensonline.co.uk> wrote:



>Note that I've also set the SLAVE card to be half duplex, but I still get the synchronization errors.
>
>From the information in the OpenVMS/FAQ we can deduce that the card in the '300 TIGER is a DE500-AA, and the card in the AS1000A SLAVE is a DE500-XA.
>
>I have tried changing, independently, the duplex setting, speed setting and auto negotiation setting at each end via the console.
>
>Continued thanks for the help.

my understanding was that the older DE500's would have problems doing auto-neg,
and possibly auto-detect.  

See:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01608357&cc=au&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_AUEN


Some (all?) of the DE500-XA's i've plugged into cheap unmanaged switches
would just sit and spin (some sort of autoneg loop on the switch-side)

You might just punt around the whole issue, and substitute DE600's (intel chips)
DE602-BA corresponds to (compaq/hp part) NC3134. about 50-70 USD$, last time I looked.
(Depending whether you need to net-boot over these nics)

You might also just try to get the most-recent DE500's you can find (DE500-BA?).

subject to correction by someone who remembers the exact details, 
my understanding was that competing auto-neg standards had not settled until ~1992.  

(Tongue-in-cheek) There was the Digital way, probably technically superior/more correct, 
and the Cisco way.   the Cisco method won.  ("Cisco" might also mean Cisco/3COM)