Cyclades PathRouter

Cyclades PathRouter

Unfortunately I know almost nothing about this router or the company which built it. Cyclades Corporation was likely founded in early 1990s (perhaps in 1991) in Fremont, CA, US and was bought by Avocent in 2006.

The device has a steel case with dimensions roughly 22 x 16.5 x 3cm with all conectors located on 3 of its sides. The bottom has only rubber feets and the pair of mounting holes.

There are the following conectors:

  • Left-hand side, top to down:
    • HUB - an RJ45 10BASE-T Ethernet port.
    • AUI - a DA-15 Attachment Unit Interface (AUI) port.
    • Power - a DE-9 (male) power connector. External power supply provides +5V, -12V, and +12V.
  • Bottom:
    • PORT 1 and PORT2 - a DB-25 (female) ports, likely some sort of a serial interface.
  • Up, right to left:
    • HIGH-SPEED ASYNC - a DB-25 (female) port.
    • CONSOLE - a DB-25 (female) RS-232 console port. Uses 9600-8-N-1 setting.

There are 6 LEDs on the cover. Four of them (LinK, TX, RX, COllision) are related to the Ethernet port but the purpose of the remaining 2 marked A1 and A2 is unknown.

The router is based on an AMD Am186EM-40VC microcontroller and a SAB 82532 Enhanced Serial Communication Controller.

On the bottom side of the case is a label with the MAC address of the router: 00-60-2E-00-04-98. This address is from the range owned by CYCLADES Corp.

When powered on with the terminal (emulator) connected to the console, the router boots up immediately:


Booting from Original Boot Code Version 1.2.3 (Mar/20/98)

Testing RTC ....................... OK
Testing RAM ....................... OK
Testing Flash [Configuration] ..... OK
Testing Flash [Op Code] ........... OK
Testing Synchronous Controller .... OK
Testing Asynchronous Controller ... OK
Testing Ethernet .................. OK

Hardware boot.
............

              ---------------------------------------------------
              | CYCLADES-PathRouter Version V_1.2.6 (May/15/98) |
              |  Copyright (C) 1992, 1998 CYCLADES Corporation  |
              ---------------------------------------------------



[Router  1] login :

The default login is super with password surt. This is the main menu and how to start a telnet session as an example:


[Router  1] login : super
[Router] Password : ****

Cyclades-PathRouter (PathRouter name) Main Menu

 1-Configure Interface     2-Configure Hosts         3-Telnet
 4-Reboot                  5-Configure Users         6-Router Management
 7-Logout                  8-Ping                    9-Configure Dial-Out
10-Traceroute

Select option ==> 3

Cyclades-PathRouter (PathRouter name) Telnet Menu

1-Open session            2-Close session           3-Switch session

Select option ==> 1
Host name ( to quit): 192.168.2.2

Trying <  192.168.2.2 , 23 >
Session 1
login: user
Password:
Last login: Sat Feb 15 19:48:47 2025 from 192.168.2.225
You have new mail.
sopdet ~ $