We are a small non-profit college that had a WS-C2924C-XL-EN donated to us. I am thinking of using it to replace/extend our small office network switch (that is currently using a Dlink or Linksys 16 port
10/100 switch and a couple of 8 port 10mbs hubs).I am trying to check out how the 2924 is configured and assign an ip for administration. I cannot seem to connect to the terminal port. Of course no cables came with it, but the cisco manuals are pretty clear on which pins connect where. I soldered up a jumper cable but cannot get any response out of it. I know that I have my software (hyperterm on win98 laptop) set to 9600/8/n/1 and the PC is talking because it will talk to an external modem plugged in. (The PC will even talk to itself when I connected txd to rxd and rts to cts on a breakout box). (I'm an old hardware hacker from the 80's)
But I am not seeing _any_ chatter at all from the 2924 when I connect it up. Is there anything that would disable the terminal port that I should check? (I did connect cts to rts on the terminal port to see if that would get it to talk.) From what I can tell I have the right pins - (txd has voltage on it, rxd is 0, etc.) I didn't dig out the scope yet....
Otherwise, it appears that the switch works fine - I have plugged into random ports and didn't notice any troubles with the computers plugged into those ports. I am planning to use the fibre ports to connect to a Dlink DES1016R with fibre ports in another building next door. That seemed to work fine too. I just wanted to check to be sure there wasn't any funny stuff in the configuration before I put it into production.
On another note, I see that these 2900 series switches are dirt cheap on E-bay. Is there any reason not to snap up three or four of them to wire a college dormitory with 88 ports instead of buying new hardware at $2k or more? (We are a non-profit college, so every little bit helps...) The pipe coming in is just a wireless dsl link. Is there any reason they wouldn't keep running for another 5-10 years? Is there a dummies guide to old cisco hardware that summarizes the ins and outs of various models?
Thank you.
----- David Meed