[quote user="Cathy Rust"]ustation.exe model1.dgn -waMyVba.mvba [/quote]
VBA is not designed or intended to operate as an INITAPP. That's reserved for MDL applications. I'm not surprised that it doesn't work with CONNECT, but I am surprised that it ever worked in MicroStation V8i.
The way to start a VBA macro early on is to write an event handler that responds to MicroStation events. VBA help describes those: search for Working with MicroStation events. We also provide some examples here. You can cause your macro to load either when the project loads or when a DGN file is opened.