minicom and Cisco equipment issues

[James Knott]

Kihara Muriithi wrote:
> Hi pals,
>  I wonder if someone have seen this problem before. I have not been 
> able to use a usb-serial cable to get access to Cisco equipment. I am 
> sure minicom is properly configured as I have used the same setting 
> that I used on another box that works well with Ciscos. The main 
> difference is the serial port. One has a real serial port while the 
> other one emulate a serial port through a USB port.
>   The connection seems solid as I can see some Cisco CDP error 
> message  mixed up with a lot of gibberish on the console. I however 
> can not interact with the console, and the only way out of it seem to 
> kill the console. The device node is properly created, the kernel 
> notice the interface insertion well -as inferred from the dmesg. I am 
> at a loss at where else I can look for likely issue with this setup. 
> Have someone encountered it and what was the solution? Advice

First, make sure the serial port can talk to itself.  Short pins 2 & 3 
of the DE-9 connector and configure minicom for no handshaking.  When 
you type, you should see the characters appear on the screen.  If that 
appears OK, then you know the serial port is working properly.  Also, 
try connecting to the Cisco without handshaking.  I use a serial 
connection to some equipment that uses the same connection as Cisco and 
it requires handshaking to be off.

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