Got switches?

[VaeVictis]

Lol recently accquired a couple rack mount switches for free that were just old ones that were gonna get thrown out

ones a baystack 350-24t and the other is a cisco catalyst 2820 xD

idk if either work but i figured for free you cant go wrong, hoping at least one does so i can just screw around with it once i get a comm cable and such

kinda disappointed that the cisco switch looks like it was dropped the front plastic is pretty broken in spots and you can hear shit moving around when you tilt the switch... the baystack seems to be fine though unless it got hit with a surge or somethin

[reaper]

The Nortel switch uses this kind of cable to connect to the console port (taken from the manual):

A standard RS-232 serial communications cable with a DB-9 connector at one
end for connection to the console/service port, and an appropriate connector
(typically a DB-9 or DB-25 connector) at the other end for connection to the
serial port on the console terminal

The Cisco switch uses a rollover cable, where pins go like 1-7 on one side and 7-1 on the other.  The rj45 to db9 adapters might change the pinout though so you would have to plan for that if you don't get a premaid cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_port

Youl could also check if it has a management IP address already assigned by connecting to a port in vlan 1 (if the config is like that), and running a packet capture looking for gratutious arps or something, or scanning for 10.0.0.0/8, etc.