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Topic: How to find/wire console PINs on a board?

The content of this topic has been archived on 2 May 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

Hello,

I am trying to hack the D-Link DGS-1210 switch, as all source code is provided by D-Link and it seems "doable" to port OpenWRT.
See my post here : https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=56245

On the board, there are 8 straight pins available. One of them is returning 3,3 V, so I guess this is the serial console.

How to find and connect the PINs to a serial cable?

The red lead should be connected to 3V,
The black lead to GND,
The white lead to TXD.
The green lead to RXD.

At first, I am trying to find ground PIN. How to proceed ?

Kind regards,
GNUTELLA

Unfortunately, I think I fried the motherboard trying to connect pins together. I touched two pins and the board does not boot. I does not matter, still have two switches and there useless as D-Link offers no IPv6 and they can trashed anyway for lack of D-Link to offer real products.

I will enquire the dead board first.

(Last edited by gnutella on 14 Mar 2015, 13:51)

The ground is connected to all the system grounds, such as the shield plates and the (-) side of the power adapter plug.  This should be apparent when looking at the board and seeing that the pin is connected to a large area of copper instead of just a trace.  You can test this with an ohmmeter, should be near zero ohms from the pin to something that is grounded.  Never use an ohmmeter with the system power on, of course.

Thank you for the information.

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