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

This is one of the oldest sections on Dragonsdawn.org, written back when I didn't even know the HTML code for &. More recently, I updated to the new style sheet and corrected the errors in the HTML. When I first wrote the page, the use of a 1980/90s era Mac to Cisco serial cable was dubious, and today it is approaching comical. But I will leave the page up incase somebody somewhere cares.

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.

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.

Male RJ-45 connector pins:

Diagram of the Cisco RJ-45 serial pinouts.

Macintosh mini-DIN 8 pins:

Diagram of the old Macintosh serial pinouts.