Hi,

I just spent a lot of last week trying to access the console of an old datacenter switch. I made a cable from the pinout of a similar switch.

My switch is a Dell S3048-ON this was for a C9010, it turned out to be correct.

So I tried over and over to make it work, but kept getting this garbled mess, but the mess was consistent with the rythm of a booting switch, and it kind of always looked the same

With many of these, I have many spares I thought they were broken, but they were not

I checked the signals with oscilloscope they were, dirty

So I made the signals cleaner by tidying it up

But still, it is a mess of garbled text !

Here I am using the other kind of serial adapter, this one serial to ethernet

Here is two runs, still garbled

As a last ditch attempt, I remembered one my old server has a real serial port !!

And it worked !

message continued in comment

  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    1·
    11 days ago

    I reached the limit in the post body so I can continuing it here

    [I am no longer able to post pictures , imagine here the text, it is no longer garbled]

    So the “real” serial port worked, but not my adapters !

    So my question is this

    What doesn’t the serial output work with these adapters ?

    I imagine it is because the TTL voltage levels versus the serial voltages levels.

    How do I do level shiting, preferably passively so that my adapters work ?

    Especially my serial to ethernet adapter, which I don’t know any economical alternatives for.

    These are WCH CH9121 by the way !