Catalyst 1900 console access

Hello All.

I'm doing some work at a small non profit organization. They have three WS-C1912-EN switches. The person that installed this equipment left no documentation. No problem I thought, there should be a way to reset each switch to the factory defaults.

I looked at the Cisco Password Recovery Procedure for the Cisco Catalyst 1700, 1900, 2100, 2800, and 2820.

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seemed ok, until step 4. Step 4 states to release the 'LED Mode' button one or two seconds after the LED over port 1x goes out. The LED over port 1x never goes. on. When I hold the LED Mode button down during a power cycle, none of the lights come on. I couldn't tell if the reset worked. So I decided to check the console.

I get nothing out the console port. I double checked the console port settings 9600,n,1,n. I used one of the Cisco blue console cables that we had available. I used the vanilla Microsoft hyperterminal program. I still get nothing from the console port.

Now on to my questions.

1 - Is the recovery process I used correct? While it is in the Cisco documentation, computers (and switches) don't read documentation. Is there another way to return a 1900 back to the factory defaults?

2 - Am I using the correct console cable (pn 72-3383-01)? Is there any way to determine if the console port is working? According to some documentation I saw, the console port could be damaged if someone plugged an ethernet cable into it. Having seen some of the work done here - anything is possible.

TIA - Mark

Wow, those are ancient.. :)

Are the switches working otherwise? From later on, it sounds like these are borked? If you don't hold down the mode button, do they power up with the LEDs going on in sequence, flashing and then going out that shows a normal boot? You do get console output as they boot too.

They for sure used the standard Cisco console cabling. Does your setup control anything else cisco? Can you get console back on them when they are running normal?

For all the documentation about console cables, the core cisco gear has used the same pinout and spec for so long, that it'd be hard to find a non-working "cisco" console cable. Sure, some of the offbeat purchased gear has something different, like the Cisco67x DSL boxes. But overall, a cisco console cable works pretty universally.

So, yes, that is the correct part #, even though it was created many years since the 1912 switch was made.