From: Buddy Jenkins (buddy.jenkins@xxxxxxxxx)
Date: Thu Apr 04 2002 - 16:11:13 GMT-3
Alternate Title: I have seen the inside of the IBM Data Connector and lived
to tell about it!
Thank you to all those who replied with advice. Especially Fred, Kris,
Warren, and Mamoor. I knew that someone on this list would have experienced
this situation and felt my pain. The grand prize goes to Mamoor who
suggested I take a close look at the wiring of the Tokenring cable. I had
swapped cables previously but never looked at the wiring because these
cables I have look professionally made. They are very nice looking cables.
Well I did some searches on the archives of Group Study and Yahoo and came
up with the correct wiring for a DB9 to IBM Data Connector. I learned a
lot. I did not know that the connector was a hermaphrodite - neither male
nor female or both if you prefer. Anyway I learned the proper cabling
pinout is like this:
db9 IBM Purpose
Pin 1 Red Recieve +
Pin 5 Black Transmit -
Pin 6 Green Receive -
Pin 9 Orange Transmit +
Mamoor's break through advice was to make sure that the MAU had an audible
"click" when the no shut command was issued on the router. I will digress
at this point. I have been working in the networking field for a long time.
However, all of my previous experience with Tokenring was in removing
hundreds of MAU's and Miles of Cable. My previous experience has taught me
wonderful things like the panduit that previously held two Tokenring cables
can now hold eight cat5 cables. Incredible that new space saving ethernet
technology! Anyway, I went home from work yesterday with many suggestions
that I had printed out from the good folks here on group study. I was armed
with a war chest of ideas and eager to test them out. I turned on my
routers and the first thing I did was make sure all the interfaces were in
the shut down state. I then removed all the cables from the MAU and
inserted the Lobe Testing device into each port once again for good measure.
Next I plugged in one cable to the MAU. Now for the real meal deal... I put
my ear right on top of the MAU and hit the enter key on the router executing
the no shut command. Nothing but silence and the router telling me that the
interface was up/up. According to Mamoor this is bad news. OK now I am
getting excited, I have a lead, a clear course of action. I immediately
disconnected the cable and disasembled the DB9 end. OK let's see the red
wire is connected to pin 1, hmmm..., the black wire is connected to pin 5,
hmmm..., the Green wire... You get the picture, everything was 100% OK. I
was now getting depressed. The DB9 side was good so what were the chances
of the IBM Data Connector being bad. I spent about 15 minutes staring at
the ominous connector wondering if I really wanted to take the thing apart.
I went and had dinner, had an argument with my wife about all the money I
have been spending on this CCIE Cert, and then came back to my lab and
decided to take apart the connector. I spent at least 10 minutes trying to
very carefully take the thing apart when I finally lost my patience and got
a flat head screwdriver and just started prying. The connector came apart
easily after that. I had been worried because I could not find any type of
pin out for the IBM data cable that said pin 1 green, etc. I need not have
worried because the actual inside of the connector was color coded.
BREAKTHROUGH!!!! The green wire is in the red slot. The Black wire is in
the Orange slot and so on. I rewired the connector and put it back
together. I connected the cable to the router and MAU, put my ear once
again on top of the MAU and then executed a "no shut". CLICK!!! Yeah baby
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, the most beautiful sound. I rewired another connector
and hooked up the other router. Once again CLICK. I tried a ping from one
router to the other... Success. I turned off the routers and computer, made
up with my wife, and gave her a kiss goodnight. I went to bed thinking all
is beautiful in the world and my life now has balance because I got the
tokenring in my lab to actually pass a packet....
Buddy
"A man doesn't need a lot for happiness, just a working tokenring lab"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Jun 13 2002 - 10:57:54 GMT-3