KB ID 0001073 

Problem

A colleague asked me if I had a USB console cable, because the switch he was working on had a failed RJ45 console port. I thought it was just the same cable that charged my phone (USB A to micro USB). But it isn’t, it’s mini USB.

I thought, that might happen to me at some point, and rather than carry yet another cable I got onto eBay and got a female micro USB to male mini USB converter for about 99p. Then all I needed to do was test it.

Solution

Use Cisco USB Console Cable on Mac OSX

1. Just plug it in and the Mac detects it without the need for drivers, (providing the other end is plugged into a device!). You may see something like the following popup, if you run VMware Fusion;

Note: if you want to find out what device it is being called by macOS, simply issue the following command;

[box]ls -ltr /dev/*usb*[/box]

2. You can then can connect directly to it (using 9600 baud as usual), with the following command (your device name in red will differ);

[box]screen /dev/tty.usbmodem1411 9600[/box]

3. Or if you use an application;

RoyalTSX

Using SecureCRT

4. And we are in.

Use Cisco USB Console Cable on Windows

Things are a little more convoluted on Windows, you need to install a driver (which involves a reboot).

1. Download the Windows Cisco USB Console Cable Driver.

2. When installed and connected to a Cisco device, you should see something like the following in device manager (devmgmt.msc).

3. Now using your preferred terminal emulation software (below I’m using PuTTY) connect using the COM port you identified above.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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