'audiophile' switches

Thanks for your response. It’s a Cisco WS-C2960S-48LPS-L
1 Gb PoE
Well it’s more of an audiophile switch than my NETGEAR. I agree it’s noisy but it’s not in my listening room. Also I don’t think there are any 48 port ‘audiophile’ switches. Although, I only have 7 direct links to hifi related pieces of kit.
I now have a serial cable and the techies I spoke to today said that I needed an emulator so I have installed PuTTY via HomeBrew on my MacBook.
Thanks for the link … I’ll check it out.

Assume you’re using os x.

If you don’t need the line break: putty will work, but so will the in built command (start the terminal app to get to the cli)

screen /dev/ttyS0 9600

You’ll have to search in /dev for the right device name. Try plugging and unplugging and see which one appears and disappears.
You can also check out tips here:
https://pbxbook.com/other/mac-tty.html

There’s also a tip in this article about simulating a line break using the wrong speed (1200 bps) and the space bar… https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/routers/10000-series-routers/12818-61.html#topic3

WS-C2960S-48LPS-L is indeed gigabit on all ports. PoE 370w total. 15w per port. But not PoE+ for more modern devices (30w per port) I guess you’re not using poe at all.

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BTW, I think PUTTY is only needed on Windows, the command line MacOS’s terminal is so much better.

Thanks for your response @Quinn_MIT . Well that’s what I thought but the techie said it would not work, and I had not managed to get it to work either. We will have to see, but I will give it another go over the weekend.

Thanks for the tip - I’ll give it a go over the weekend.

If you connect to your switch, look up on how to set up a loop back address… that is give your switch an IP address (give it a name and use dhcp, or fix the IP address if you have only a basic DNS/DHCP setup)
Then you can telnet, or SSH into the switch via the Ethernet directly from your Mac … which is the recommended may for most uses.
It’s how I connect to all my network devices… you then don’t need serial console cables and the like.

BTW unless you have a very old Cisco switch, you don’t need to use the serial console cable…
Connect a Mac or pc directly to the switch and nothing else… after having set your pc Mac to use DHCP if not already. Then put 10.0.0.1 in a browser (default address for your switch), you can Then connect to basic setup, where you can give it a proper address

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Yes, ssh or telnet into the switch is the way to go for a MacOS-based machine. I was in fact a bit mystified by @MeToo’s post. :slight_smile:

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Being able to use the web or to telnet or SSH into a Cisco switch to trigger the initial configuration dialogue depends on the switch config having being wiped first as far as I know. And that wasn’t clear to me from the OP whether that had been done. But if you tell me otherwise then OK. BTW telnet is no longer installed natively on OS X, although you can find downloads.

The line break method on the physical console port using a USB to serial adapter usually allows you to override any existing password, and wipe the configuration yourself.

Oh well I guess my 2960 is an old one …

As my Console cable is on my desk at work, this is useful info - thanks Simon.

I’ve got an unusual issue so i’m interested in having a look at the switch logs to see what is going on as i have a port indicating a link fault. I noticed the other day that the activity light on my uplink port (which connects to my Router) was occasionally flashing alternate orange and green for around 10 seconds and then going back to normal flickering green. I’ve ruled out cables and ports and have come to the conclusion that it’s related to a change of Router. I’ve recently moved from an Airport Extreme to a TP Link Deco system and it’s only started doing it since the change over.

Any pointers would be appreciated !

James

In which case if very old then yes you will need to initially use the console cable to set up a loop back, then you can use Ethernet telnet or ssh.

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Alternate green and amber identifies a link fault… for what ever reason the switch is seeing framing errors on the port. It sounds like the device the other end may be at fault.
Another possibility is link negotiation error, and half duplex is running with high frame collisions.
Indeed connect to the switch and see what is happening on that port interface which might account for the sporadic nature of the alternate colours. You might need to manually/administratively assign full duplex in that port if showing as half duplex.

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Yes real backward step in the latest OS X versions, but easy to put back in

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Cheers Simon - much appreciated.

James

And did that drop the noise floor noticably - and did your jaw drop open with amazement?

I didn’t know sensible posts like these were allowed, but it’s great to know they are.

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Yes - annoyed me when they did that.

You can use HomeBrew to install it from within Terminal

/usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”

brew install telnet

Hi @Michaelb, so what’s new with your Melco S100? Still improving? Will replace the ER?

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Still just impressions as it comes on song, but so far it’s not there on classical instrument textures - a characteristic of much low noise floor high-end equipment - and sometimes the soundstaging is a bit more special effect than real life, but I’m going to give it a little longer before coming to any judgments on its stock performance and then powering it with the Sean Jacobs power supply.

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FWIW some of the texture is improving today, but I’m going to hang fire for a few days and then get back in the listening impressions thread

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