Q:

Managing 3Com Switch

I just bought an old 3Com switch off eBay to play around with. The model is 3c17302a. The console port is a male D9 port. 
This may seem extremely obvious, but how do I connect to this port? I have one of those light blue Cisco console cables that does D9 to RJ45. Can I just plug the RJ45 into the ethernet port on my laptop? How do I star

A:

It's a serial connection, not an ethernet connection so no, plugging it into your network port will not do anything productive. Chances are poor that your workstation has a serial port, so you'll need a USB->Serial adaptor. When you have that, just use a null modem DB9 cable to connect from the USB->Serial adaptor to the switch.

