Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Weaver]

I have a ZyXel NWA-3560-n WAP which needs debricking, and I'm too foggy to work out how to do it. Could anyone give me some tips?

[burakkucat]

I have a very vague feeling that we've discussed this previously.    Let me check . . .

Ah, yes. Found it. I hope that helps. 

[Weaver]

Many thanks for spotting that, very very foggy today.  My apologies.

In order to follow those instructions, I would need to get hold of a suitable piece of hardware to give me access to a console rs232 cable. (Or equivalent at some other voltage?) I think I'm completely out of luck trying to access Rs232 from an _iPad_, my daily workhorse, I need a PC and some common old-fashioned software.

[burakkucat]

I haven't looked closely at the hardware requirements but I wonder if a USB to TTL serial adaptor cable is what will be required?

For example, it was just a few days ago that I needed to access a Raspberry-Pi via its serial console. Normally it would be accessed via a ssh session through its Ethernet port but as I was re-configuring the latter, I needed an alternative mode of access. My solution was to use a USB to TTL Serial Cable - Debug / Console Cable.

The Tx, Rx & Ground leads were connected to the relevant header pins on the R-Pi and when the USB adaptor was plugged into a laptop computer it was recognised as /dev/ttyUSB0

From the command line, the following incantation provided the connection (and made a record of all the commands that I issued) --

screen -L -U /dev/ttyUSB0 115200,istrip

[Weaver]

brilliant - many thanks for that tip.

[burakkucat]

Not knowing how the ZyXEL WAP looks, I went in search of any available images.

It appears that the NWA3560-N has its own dedicated console port and I would expect that there would be an appropriate lead available from the manufacturer.

[NewtronStar]

That's like a 6 pin DIN socket

[burakkucat]

That's like a 6 pin DIN socket

That was my initial thought but then I noticed the internal rectangle between the the pin receptacles and the presence of notches at the twelve, four and eight o'clock positions . . .

I get the feeling that it is a proprietary connector. 

[roswellgrey]

"mini-din-6" possibly ? i.e. a ps/2 keyboard end ...

[Weaver]

Perhaps they intentionally made the connector weird as a rather weak kind of security, hoping that no mere mortals, only the high priests, would have the right lead to plug in and start interfering.

[Weaver]

I'm not sure much further progress will be possible at the moment, because things have taken a turn for the worse. The pain in my hands and the confusion is so bad that physical limitations will prohibit complex physical and mental tasks. I'm switching to voice input.

I haven't tried to reflash the WAP, it's just got its knickers into a twist over modifications to startup / config files I think. One looks a bit like initial shell scripts in a language of their own, CLi stuff, acts a bit like autoexec.bat (dates me), and iirc I was trying to copy a file from one WAP to another and get it to either overwrite the existing file on the second WAP, or to re-point it to use a second alternative file with a new name. Can't precisely remember, as it was a while ago.

So I'm wondering if some procedure of poking a weapon into some hole might be good enough as on some devices you can do a “restore to factory settings” kind of thing.