Media for Catalyst 1900 console access

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.

formatting link

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