Reddit reviews StarTech.com 6 ft Straight Through Serial Cable - DB9 F/F - Serial cable - DB-9 (F) to DB-9 (F) - 6 ft - MXT100FF

Ah, in that case, you need one of these or something like it: Female to Female DB9 cable: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00066HP2E

And one of these or something like it if you don't have a serial port on your laptop (you probably don't): USB to Serial adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00066HP2E

And you can use a program like Tera Term or PuTTY to talk to the switch through the adapter.

My list for mobile/portable operating would look something like this...

For a man portable setup I could carry in a pack, the highest capacity LiFePO4 battery I could afford.

Otherwise, if I'm driving out to a fixed operating site, then the biggest AGM deep cycle battery I would care to lug from the car a short distance to the operating site.

A lightweight computer with good battery life so I don't have to worry about external power for it out in the field. I'm not really a Mac guy, but I'd probably bring my Macbook Pro for this task.

The TS-480 doesn't require a Signalink/Rigblaster type interface for digital operation, but you will need the following items to interface to your computer...

• USB to serial converter. Don't buy the Prolific chipset garbage, save yourself the frustration and spend the few bucks for something with an FTDI chipset.
  
  
• Kenwood PG-5H data cable set. You can also make this if you want, Your TS-480 should have shipped with a plastic baggie with the connectors in it to make this (pinouts are detailed towards the back of the manual). Or, you can get them on ebay. I bought mine mainly because hate soldering stuff to DIN connector pins.
  
  
• Serial cable, straight through, female ends. Cheap and readily avaialble.
  
  
• If the laptop you're using doesn't have separate speaker out/mic in jacks, then a cheap USB audio adapter.
  
  The filters aren't truly necessary and the unit is pretty frequency stable without the TCXO, but they sure are nice to have. If you were going to put a filter in it, I would recommend the 500Hz CW filter. It comes in handy when you're trying to zero in on a particular signal or block adjacent strong signals. The DSP filtering is generally adequate, but a strong enough signal is going to swamp the AGC and that's when the crystal filters come in handy to notch that out.
  
  If you do get the TCXO, don't waste $110 on the Kenwood SO-3. The cheap Chinese TCXO's work just as well and can be had for much cheaper. I got mine from ebay for 20 bucks or so, but now you can even get them on Amazon with Prime shipping and everything.
  
  Antenna choice is highly variable. Out here in the deserts of New Mexico, you don't find much in the way of trees, so a wire antenna deployed up into a tree is out and a self supporting vertical is in. I generally pack an MFJ 1979 telescoping vertical whip with a clamping antenna mount or a collapsable fiberglass pole that I can hoist up a length of wire with. Your own situation, available terrain, bands you want to work are going to be the determining factors here.
  
  This page has some useful notice on power draw of the TS-480 with some operating scenarios and battery sizing options. A lightweight, power sipping QRP rig the TS-480 is not, but it's still very usable for portable operations.
  
  

I got this cable and this adapter. I had to install the adapter driver on the disk to get the thing to work. Then find the com port in the device manager. Once I did that I was able to get a serial connection establish.

I then fumbled my way through the CLI, set up a default gateway and when I was able to get to the Web GUI. Also the default gateway cannot be the same as your router. I tried because I didn't know better and it didn't work.

I don't know a lot, but with a good bit of google I was able to get it working.

>APC AP7753

APC RJ-12 serial cable.

> Dell Powerconnect 6224

That needs a null modem. I use this straight-through serial cable plus these slim null modem adapters with a random eBay USB serial adapter with a male plug.

> Hp 2810 (4 switches varying in port count) Fujitsu XG2600 (26port SFP+ switch)

Most things I've bought that have RJ-45 serial ports work with the standard "blue Cisco cable". Some need a null modem adapter and some don't.