I saw these slide-lock connectors used with 10BASE-2 coax Ethernet, on some Unix workstations I worked on as a teen intern (Sun, etc.), and I always wondered whether I was doing something wrong.
For starters, it'd often be a headache just to push the slide. (See the photos, and imagine the transceiver box up against a recess in the back of a heavy workstation chassis, and now you're somehow going to have to get your fingers into there, and with enough strength to push the slide the full travel, while holding the transceiver on firmly. Sometimes I'd have to use a screwdriver to push.)
Then, if you manage to slide it, it usually wouldn't hold. For reasons unclear, since it often wasn't very visible. Some of them were surely bent. Others mysteriously didn't look bent, but didn't hold, even though you got a click of the slide, and the slide seemed to be in the locked position, with the transceiver seemed to br pressed on.
Contrast with the many D-sub connectors on PCs at the time, of both smaller and larger sizes, where they'd just press on, and usually tight enough to stay in place. Or you could used the screws (thumbscrews, or the tiny screwdriver heads), which held very well, with less effort than the slide-lock.
Thankfully, every place since then, we've just done the still-familiar twisted pair with RJ45 connectors, fiber, or WiFi.
Did anyone like the AUI ("owie") transceiver slide locks, or know how to make them work?