Pinouts for making a Mac serial (mini DIN-8) to cisco consule (RJ45) cable.

Having started to do some work on cisco hardware I wanted to be able connect to them with my old powerbooks (e.g 5300c & 2400c). However, I could not find a mac to cisco cable or the necssary pinouts to make one. Eventually I figured out the pinouts by combining information from the cisco cabling documentation and the SGI O200 manual.


Male RJ-45 connector pins:



Macintosh mini-DIN 8 pins:





Here is what I came up with for what each pin does and where it should got for a Mac to Cisco cable.


Mac Pin: Cisco (RJ45) pin:
1 (HSKo) --> 1
2 (HSKi) --> 8
3 (TXD-) --> 6
4 (GND) --> 5
2 (HSKi) --> 8
3 (TXD-) --> 6
4 (GND) --> 5
5 (RXD-) --> 3
6 (TXD+) --> 2
7 (GPi) --> NC
8 (DCD) --> 7

Not all cisco ports use the same pinouts. I have found that for this to work on some ports you will have to attach a rollover cable to the end using an inline coupler. Also, I was unable to get the cable to work with a cisco DSL modem.