Recently, I was searching for rollover cable that used to connect your PC/laptop to your switch via console port. It took me for a while searching this kind of cable in Low Yat Plaza, KL. Here, you can find variety of electronics stuff from PC hardware to servers stuffs.
But, it was hard for me to find this cable. After several visit to Low Yat, I managed to find the cable together with DB9 to USB converter. As you know, the rollover cable is using serial to ethernet cable. So, this post will guide you on how to install the driver and connect your rollover cable to your switch from Mac OS X.
So, for the first step, you should have rollover cable that looks like this:
And the DB9 to USB 2.0 converter. The one that I’m using is like this:
http://www.vztec.com.my/?sec=product&type=connect&sub=5&id=13776589936053
For my Mac OS X version, I’m using Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 on MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011). You’ll need the driver for the cables that you can download at here:
http://www.prolific.com.tw/UserFiles/files/PL2303_MacOSX_1_6_1_20160309.zip
After you’ve done downloading and extracting the driver, just click at .pkg file and proceed to install the driver. Reminder, make sure you restarted you machine after installing the driver in order for system to take effect:
Then, connect/plug-in the rollover cable to DB9 to USB converter. Then connect the converter USB to you Mac. After all has been connected, click on Apple logo on top left menu bar, click About This Mac, on Overview tabs, click System Report. Ensure that you DB9 converter is connected:
After restart, you can verify if the driver has successfully installed and loaded to the system by using this command:
$ kextstat | grep prolific
or
$ ioreg -c IOSerialBSDClient | grep usb
Now finally, you need an application which will talk to the serial port. We’ll using Terminal app on Mac OS X. On Mac, the file which maps to the port is /dev/cu.usbserial. Once all the cable has been connected, run this command to start connecting to you switch is:
$ screen /dev/cu.usbserial 9600
