'audiophile' switches

Well I’ve got one demo here, which I am burbling on about in the listening impressions thread, and it is surprisingly good straight out of the box.

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There’s no doubt that in terms of bang for the buck, a refurbed or heavily discounted older generation Ciso is pretty much impossible to beat.

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If the switch works now, and sounds good, you don’t really need to console in and do a factory reset.
It’s a bit of a faff for us amateurs, but childsplay for an IT professional, of course.

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I don’t have any experience using the console as I always make sure the Ciscos I buy are factory reset/unconfigured. I know some here have had success resetting them by holding down the button but there seems to be inconsistent results with that method. I’m sure SiS will be able to advise about using the console. 200 pounds seems like a lot for a refurb switch. Is that typical for the UK?

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You can often pick them up here for £50 or less, but that depends partly on the age and spec. Still a lot cheaper than buying a brand new one, though.

I’ve been finding the 2960 catalyst varieties near new/unused for less than $100 USD shipped here in the states. I do see that many are priced much higher but if you’re patient you can find them much cheaper. The last PD 8TT L I bought was manufactured June 2018 and only cost $70USD.

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I’m using the stock supply right now.
But it’s on its own A/C line fed by a separate electrical panel.
I do plan on adding linear supply’s in a few weeks.

Speaking to the guys who refurbished the beast today reveals two things. First, I could have tried cisco as ID and password - did not think of that!
Second, the techies say that the Mac terminal console interface does not work with Cisco switches. But I could try PuTTY installed with HomeBrew. I like the sound of that :beer:.

Ok too late for them to talk me through it today but I will get to work with the HomeBrew.

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Patience was not my strong point! There were cheaper but they had not been officially refurbished.

I don’t worry about refurb too much, I look for switches that were bought and never used. There seems to be quite a few of them out there. These catalysts seem pretty bullet proof so as long as it’s in default mode and the condition is new or barely used that’s good enough for me. I didn’t realize the consoles can’t be used on macs. I have a console cable but have never hooked it up. I’ll have to keep that in mind if I do.

Well that’s what they said.
I like your approach …

I got sticker shock when I first started looking at these catalysts. The new prices for these things seem out of proportion to me. I have to assume there’s some intense technology going on inside these things to command such a price. I was relieved when I learned I could find them much cheaper, even for new ones. But yes, that requires patience. Ebay has quite a few options.

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Which model 2960, 2960s or 2960x exactly?

Do you have a usb to serial console cable?

Resetting the password is standard practise for any it professional, but you sometimes needs a terminal emulator that can simulate a “line break” on older models.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst2960/software/release/12-2_25_see/configuration/guide/scg_1/swtrbl.html#wp1021182

Some versions of 2960 have gigabit ports. Others are 10/100 only.

I’ve one in my loft that I play around with for config testing, but I find it noisy and expensive for power (I don’t leave it on 7x24 by any means… only when I’m testing something).

I wouldn’t consider it audiophile but whatever floats your boat.

And as my colleague once told me: no switch is ever going to be as fast as a simple Ethernet cross-over cable. No matter how expensive it is.

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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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