Serial connection towards Cloudbox

[powdersurge]

Hi

Is there anyone who knows how to connect a Prolific serial to USB converter to the GPIO's of a CB (white)?
For most this will be trivial, but I can't seem to be able to get a console running.

This is the converter I have:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PL2303-USB-to ... OU:BE:3160

The converter has 4 wires at the end: green,red,white and black.

Any help most appreciated.

[fvdw]

It must be TTL 3.3V compatible, thats what you will need for your nas.
I can not see if this is a 5 volt or 3.3 volt version. A 5 volt one will damage your motherboard
Typical these cables are 5 volt (because thats supplied form the usb port)

You need to find out which wire is RX, TX, tx, V+ and ground and then find pin connectors spec for the cloudbox.
from the product specification given you can find this
Red cable:VCC; Black cable: GND; Green cable: TXD; White cable: RXD

I don't have a cloudbox so I can not help you with that part, but google is your friend
this is a link to a picture form nwsp2 serial connector but it might be different on the cloudbox
http://lacie.nas-central.org/wiki/Seria ... space_2%29

pcb pictures of the cloudbox are here: http://lacie-nas.org/doku.php?id=cloudbox

it looks very similar to nwsp2

serial.JPG

[powdersurge]

Beautiful.
Thank you for the detailed writing.

I'm not proficient with the electronics department; just wanted to be able to connect to the board and hack my way into it.
As what I've found about the Prolific chip:
http://www.stkaiser.de/anleitung/files/PL2303.pdf

The chip *should* support 3.3 and 5V TTL, so I'm quite confident that it works.
However, using the images attached, and the wire color scheme, I cannot get anything from the uart.

The blue LED blinks rapidly, so the board is powered. I'm quite convinced my CB is dead.

I'll give it some more time to try a last time before scrapping it.

Thanks again for the reply and pictures!