1760 Router only shows ASCII characters on boot.

AintRite

Not sure what has happened with this router, last time I turned it off it was working fine. I have tried to break into ROMM and it keeps displaying the ASCII. I have tried ctrl break and Puttys special commands break and it does the same thing...just provides me with some more of the same characters. Basically it displays ASCII no matter what I do. Also the system OK light is non stop blinking and I have let it try and boot for about 30 minutes with nothing happening. Is my IOS corrupt, but if it is why can't I get into ROMM. I have made no changes to it since the last time it was on either. Thanks for any help in advance.

-edit- This is for my home lab.

mapletune

It could be that your db-9 com serial adapter is at fault.

I once fried my USB-to-Serial adapter and it started displaying strange characters on my console windows.

Replaced the USB-to-Serial adapter and everything is fine.

Hope that's what's happening to you since it's an easy fix

AintRite

the cable and db9 port work with my other routers. I actually have the all hooked up to a Digi32 and they all work there besides this router. I have a feeling it something more serious because I cant access ROMM mode...I hope I'm wrong though.

mgates67

Sounds like it might be a baud rate and/or parity incompatibility. Any chance that got changed on either side?

AintRite

No, everything is set correctly. I'll double check (I made sure last night though) but nothing has been changed at all since it was last used last week. My Digi works fine with the other 3 routers, 2 of those being the exact same router, 1760, and those two 1760s work fine with the console connection into Putty also.

steve2012

I'm really just throwing a dart here, but I would pull the cover, then the Ram, then re-seat it just to see it had anyhting to do with it. It's a cheap fix if that resets it.


Steve

bacardi_dwb

most of the time when that has happened to me it was a baud rate mismatch. i would go try a few different baud rates to see if it changes.

AintRite

Thanks guys will try those now.

santaowns

I had same issue on my 1760 turned out to be my console cable. On your digi try different port and or the actual db9 cisco console cable.

AintRite

I have been super busy and haven't tried to reinstall the ram yet and haven't tried a different port on the digi yet. I have tired the actual cisco cable though. I'll update the results tomorrow.

AintRite

Welp, that didn't work either. do you guys think that the flash or ram might have went bad while it was sitting.LOL I'm getting frustrated with this. Cable works with the other routers just fine, the port on my Digi works fine with the other routers. I have searched the web before and just now again and only found a few things but you guys mentioned all of those in this thread already. I have my CCENT coming up in a few weeks and this is just another headache. Anyone have any more ideas at all?

AintRite

Ok well I finally figured out what the problem is....it's a bad console port on the router. I decided to to try the aux port and tada it works. Sure am glad I ordered two more 1760's 3 days ago.LOL I would like to thank all of you for trying to help me figure this out.

edit- so before I actually tried to use the aux port, I posted the above. So here is what really was wrong with it. I guess I have actually learned something with all of these problems and studying I have been doing.

So when I was able to finally use the cli, I chose show version to see if I could see anything wrong and bam config-reg was set to 3922 instead of 2102. So a quick internet search told me that the speed on the console port was wrong so I put in 115200 baud in putty, restarted it and that got me to be able to use the console port on the router again. So I have it up and running now. You guys were right about the speed, but I had no way of checking anything (so I thought) so I was all pissed off because I did nothing to change anything from the last time I used it. Thanks again for all the help and I'm going to sit for my ccent the 20th of Dec.

mbw

Baud rate mismatch for me. 115200 was correct. Thank you all.