This isn’t the most intellectually stimulating post, but I recently needed to build a custom serial cable to hack into an APC AP9606 Web/SNMP Management Card. (I bought one off eBay for $35.00 installed in a MasterSwitch Plus remote power strip, and the default password had been changed.
Now, I hate soldering. The last time I had to solder a serial cable was to build an RS-422 so a friend and I could get onto the console of a salvaged Challenge L, but that was a real pain. This time, I just needed a one-off to emulate an APC 940-0024 UPS communications cable.
I ended up just going to Above All Electronics and picking up a pair of RJ45-to-DB9 adapter kits — one female, and one male — and wiring the correct pins together. For the purposes of serial communications with the MasterSwitch, you really only need the following connections:
- Pin #2 Female to Pin #2 Male
- Pin #3 Female to Pin #1 Male
- Pin #5 Female to Pin #9 Male
Everything else I just wired randomly to make it neat and clean.
Then, just take a regular Cat5e network cable and connect the two adapters you built and presto, a custom serial cable!
Thanks to the folks on tek-tips.com that provided instructions for how to reset the admin password on the card.