[rescue] Cisco weirdness

[Thomas Gallaway]

I rescued a cisco 2900-XL out of a dumpster. Turns out the guy's gave 
it a extra toss
so some of the plastic got bent but it still was in it's original 
wrapping and never uses.
By the way this is the 2U unit with 16 * 10/100 ports and 2 expansion 
bay's.

After turning it on first I used the wrong serial cable and all I got 
as output from the
serial port was jibbrish and crap. I could read some of the words but 
most was just
jibbrish. Well upon switching the rj45 to serial plug thing now I am 
getting a correct
serial output.

So the switch works, I can plug in stuff but here is my problem. Not 
every NIC or
switch I connect works. This is total random. I am able to connect a 
sun nic, a switch
and a wireless access point too it but an PC's nic or another 
switch/hub will not get
a link. I tried all ports and different cables and did not seem to find 
anything usefull.
I was able to upload the latest IOS image to it but that did not fix 
it. It does not seem
that the switch really is bad as I can connect to every port and telnet 
into the switch.
It is just that I can not plug everything into it.