Alright, let’s talk about this thing, this “diore hubbard”. It wasn’t something I went looking for, you know? It sort of just landed in my lap on that project a couple of years back. We were cleaning out an old storage closet, trying to make space, and buried under a pile of old cables and forgotten keyboards, there it was. A heavy, beige box with just “Diore Hubbard – Model 3B” stenciled on the front. No manual, no power cord, nothing.
First Contact
My boss, bless his heart, saw it and his eyes lit up. “Ah! The old Hubbard! Heard legends about this. See if you can get it working, might save us ordering a new switch for the test bench.” Right. Legends. Usually means nobody knows what it actually does or if it even works anymore. But, orders are orders.
So, the first step was just finding a power cord. It used one of those weird, chunky connectors, not the standard kettle lead. Took me half a morning rummaging through boxes of ancient adapters until I found one that fit. Plugged it in. A few lights flickered amber, then nothing. Okay, not dead at least. Maybe.
Digging In
Next step, figure out how to talk to it. It had a bunch of network ports, looked like old 10/100 Ethernet, and a serial port labeled “Console”. Okay, standard enough for old gear. I grabbed my trusty USB-to-Serial adapter and a console cable. Fired up PuTTY on my laptop. Tried the usual baud rates – 9600, 115200, cycled through a few others. Nothing. Just garbage characters or a blank screen.
This was getting frustrating. I spent a whole afternoon just trying different serial settings. Found a sticker on the bottom with a faded MAC address range, which was something, I guess. Tried searching online for “Diore Hubbard Model 3B”. Absolutely zero useful results. A few forum posts from like, 2002, mentioning the name but no technical details, no manuals, nothing.
- Tried default IPs? Nope.
- Looked for reset buttons? Found a tiny pinhole, tried holding it down while powering on. Lights blinked differently, but still no console access.
- Tried connecting directly to the network ports? Laptop wouldn’t get an IP. Manually setting an IP in common private ranges didn’t help either.
The Breakthrough… Sort Of
I was about ready to tell the boss it was a brick. Gave it one last shot. Remembered some really old gear used weird terminal emulations or required specific key presses on boot. Started mashing Ctrl+C, Ctrl+B, Spacebar, Enter, everything I could think of while it powered up. And then, something happened. Garbage characters stopped, and a prompt appeared: DH3B Console>. Holy cow. Progress!
But the command set was completely alien. Typing ‘help’ or ‘?’ just gave an ‘Unknown command’ error. I started typing random short words. ‘show’, ‘config’, ‘status’, ‘ports’. Eventually, ‘show status’ printed something. A bunch of cryptic lines, mostly saying ‘Port Down’ or ‘Unit OK’. No way to actually configure anything, though. Couldn’t set an IP, couldn’t manage VLANs, nothing you’d expect from a switch.
End Result
After another day of poking at it, I figured out it wasn’t really a manageable switch. It seemed to be some kind of dumb, ruggedized hub or maybe a media converter specific to some ancient system we didn’t even have anymore. It passed packets between ports, sure, but that was it. No management, no features.
So, I wrote up my findings. Explained I’d spent way too much time on it, found the console access (documenting the weird boot-up key combo), but confirmed it wasn’t suitable for the test bench needs. It couldn’t replace a modern switch.
The boss was a bit disappointed but appreciated the effort. The “legendary” Diore Hubbard went back into the storage closet, probably waiting for the next poor soul to waste their time on it. Sometimes, you just gotta know when to quit with these old mystery boxes. Fun little diversion, I guess, but totally unproductive in the end.
