Ready-made serial console cables

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thechief
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Ready-made serial console cables

Post by thechief » Wed Nov 11, 2009 10:13 am

As you all know, a serial console cable is a very useful thing to have for the purpose of troubleshooting (and de-bricking) routers and firmwares. There are instructions on this forum for building one from a Nokia dku-5 cable, but not everyone is technically minded, so it would be useful if there were working ready-made versions.

We have come across a few ready-made ones on Ebay, but, of course, we have no idea whether any of them works. So we would like members to share experiences (if any) in this thread. Has anyone used any of these (below) successfully?

1. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RS232-TTL-Convert ... 4a994262e3

2. http://cgi.ebay.com/RS232-to-3-3-5v-TTL ... dZViewItem

3. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-To-TTL-Conver ... 53dd53df4e

4. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RS232-Serial-Port ... 53dcb01d2a

If so, can you please tell us:
(a) which one?
(b) which router you used it with?
(c) which line was placed over which pin on the router's serial connector?

NOTE: we cannot at present recommend any of them because we do not know whether any of them works. One of the purposes of this thread is to see whether there is any worth recommending.

Thanks.
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by thechief » Sun Nov 29, 2009 8:18 pm

Ok, I have now got this one. And it works. It should work with any Class II router that has the serial console pins on the board - you just need to know which pin to stick which header on.

Note: as was advertised in the ebay listing, it took about 17 days to arrive ...
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by cybor » Mon Nov 30, 2009 10:42 am

Hi,
I'm sorry to answer only now but I didn't see your question before.

I bought several weeks ago this one:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MAX232-RS232-Seri ... %26ps%3D63

It's works fine with my router, Roper aka PTI 845G, Zyxel 660HW and d Dlink DIR 300, I think your should be the same.

The only remark I have to say ii that with my I have to connect the 3,3 Vcc pin to the router to work, luckly all the router supply it.

Did you plan to buy a jtag too ? I bought but I didn't use till now :-)

Sorry for my english.

Ciao.
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by thechief » Mon Nov 30, 2009 10:59 am

cybor wrote:Hi,
I'm sorry to answer only now but I didn't see your question before.

I bought several weeks ago this one:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MAX232-RS232-Seri ... %26ps%3D63

It's works fine with my router, Roper aka PTI 845G, Zyxel 660HW and d Dlink DIR 300, I think your should be the same.
Probably the same - but the one I bought already had all the leads connected and labelled. For this one, you would need to buy (or make) leads - but it is much cheaper, and will probably arrive much quicker than 17 days as well. So it looks like a much better buy. Where did you buy your leads from?
cybor wrote:Did you plan to buy a jtag too ? I bought but I didn't use till now :-)
I do have jtag (custom made) - and I have had plenty of cause to use it! I think jtag is less standardised than the serial connectors, so it would not be easy to find one that works with every router.
cybor wrote:Sorry for my english.
Your English is quite fine - and far better than my Italian ;)
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by cybor » Mon Nov 30, 2009 3:53 pm

thechief wrote:Probably the same - but the one I bought already had all the leads connected and labelled. For this one, you would need to buy (or make) leads - but it is much cheaper, and will probably arrive much quicker than 17 days as well. So it looks like a much better buy. Where did you buy your leads from?
I made myself, the first I did, working for the Zyxel and the DIR 300 that got standard port pins (Like the usb and audio pins on motherboards) was made from a front audio cables from an old cabinet.

The cable for the Roper/PTI845G, PTI845G from this moment due to is the original model, also OUI say that on my router, got a small connector pins for the serial, the distance beetwen pins is the same of the old small audio connector on some motherboards, so I used connector and cable from and broken ones, I had to solder it due to my router don't got connectors, you can see in an old post about the PTI845G here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3007&start=0

By the way, usually to connect to Zyxel and DIr300 I check to connect the Vcc and Ground on the right pins then if it doesn't work I swap the RX and the TX :-)
I do have jtag (custom made) - and I have had plenty of cause to use it! I think jtag is less standardised than the serial connectors, so it would not be easy to find one that works with every router.
Yes, I know, pins number and position could change, but I see that in most of the case line signals are the same so I just to know somethings about flash the bootloader etc, to be ready :-)
Your English is quite fine - and far better than my Italian ;)
Thanks, anyway, if your not a history art student english is litlle bit usefull tha italian :-)
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by mstombs » Mon Nov 30, 2009 9:19 pm

cybor wrote:...
I bought several weeks ago this one:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MAX232-RS232-Seri ... %26ps%3D63

It's works fine with my router, Roper aka PTI 845G, Zyxel 660HW and d Dlink DIR 300, I think your should be the same.

The only remark I have to say ii that with my I have to connect the 3,3 Vcc pin to the router to work, luckly all the router supply it.

Hi, can you identify the Maxim chip used? The listing says 5V, but clearly yours does work with 3.3V from the router?
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by cybor » Mon Nov 30, 2009 9:52 pm

mstombs wrote:Hi, can you identify the Maxim chip used? The listing says 5V, but clearly yours does work with 3.3V from the router?
The chip is only labelled MAX232 and CSE0347 on the second line, but I think it's unusefull, on the board is write RS232 TTL 3,3v.

It work fine with all my 3 devices, I measured the Vcc on the Zyxel and it's 4,2 V at the boot so I don't know how it work at really 3,3 and I can't measure the other 2 routers.

-Edit-

I test the D-Link DIR300 and the Vcc is 5 V on the serial console pins, so I can't be sure that it works at 3,3.
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Re: Ready-made JTAG cables

Post by mstombs » Tue Jan 05, 2010 9:52 pm

Not serial console cables, but this looks a good deal for universal parallel port JTAG cables

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=64013
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by thechief » Wed Jan 06, 2010 1:49 pm

Is it likely to be faster than the other versions?
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by mstombs » Wed Jan 06, 2010 3:31 pm

thechief wrote:Is it likely to be faster than the other versions?
I don't think it is because it still appears to use a single pin toggling on the parallel port so full flash backups likely to still take all night! Fortunately blanking the nvram is always quick, and a 64k bootloader just about acceptable. I also haven't seen any source for recent version of TJTAG, but I have used the pre-compiled versions with AR7 routers.
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by gavinr » Sun Jun 27, 2010 11:53 pm

thechief wrote:Ok, I have now got this one.
Hi Chief, that e-bay listing has now expired, can you give us any info that would help me track it down? Seller name, listing title, etc?
Thanks.
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Re: Ready-made serial console cables

Post by thechief » Mon Jun 28, 2010 12:17 am

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