LG-N2B1D Serial Port Access

These are the four pins that give you TTL serial access to the device. You could attach a four pin SMD header to these pads (they are not through-hole) but as I did not have any I used some wire that I had handy. Once soldered I taped the cables down to keep them nice and tidy.

The disassembly guide here may be useful for removing the board for soldering.

The pins as displayed in the picture below are in the following order:


 * V+ 3.3 v
 * TX
 * RX
 * GND

The RX and TX should be correct but, for sanity, please double check RX and TX if you don't receive characters or garbage. The other pins are definitely correct.



The easiest way to get the cables out of the device seemed to be to route them down a hole at the back of the board at the left hand side as you are looking at it from the front.



After getting the cable down the back of the device there is what appears to be a hole for a kensington lock - I put the cables through here and taped them down to the side of the device to help prevent damage in case they get yanked and through the cable tidying thing at the back of the device.



Note that this serial port we just created is using TTL levels! If you connect them directly to an serial cable it will most likely destroy the NAS!

Here is the device all hooked up and working on my Macbook Pro using minicom. The TTL -> USB serial converter I used was an UM232R (based on the FTDI FT232R which is compatible with Windows/Mac/Linux) which I got here at Farnell. This involved a little wiring from the data sheet and a breadboard! You can also buy ready-made boards; see FTDI_USB_Breakout_board.



The serial port settings are by default 115200 bits, 8N1. There was nothing stopping me logging in via serial once I had connected - straight in as root! It has no password protection on this console!