Chances are your machine does not have the USB-to-Serial drivers installed already, so pop in the CD-ROM or download the drivers from the Interwebs and get the USB-to-Serial dongle working. With the USB-to-Serial dongle out of the package, the first step is to install the device drivers. RealTerm terminal software (Windows free open source).Some USB to RS-232 Serial Converter (DB-9) - I got two, so that I could connect to both switches simultaneously and not have to manually unplug and re-plug adapters in order to alternate between the two.or- Cisco Console Cable RJ45-to-DB9 (which is cheaper, but only available as an Amazon “add-on” - read: you must have $25 in your cart already…)

A 6ft Rollover Console Cable (DB-9 to RJ-45) - I ordered 2.If you don’t have the appropriate tools yet, this means that 3 things will be needed to get started: a Rollover Cable, a USB-to-Serial adapter, and some Terminal software. If you already know how to physically connect to your 2950 switch, click here to jump to the Catalyst 2950 password recovery procedure. Granted, I wasn’t really expecting any since the seller had not mentioned any, but to connect to a switch that I knew nothing about, the smart bet was to connect via the RJ-45 jack (which is actually a 9600 bps serial port.) So I plugged them in, but that was all I could do because there were no Console cables (aka. Well, the two switches arrived a few days later. In my last post on the Cisco CCNA, it was mentioned that an order for two used Cisco Catalyst 2950 switches had been placed.

Cisco 2950 manual configuration