Cisco serial console - cannot get interactive console

This may not be the best place to post this question...
I have purchased some old Cisco Catalyst 3750 and 3750G PoE switches as well as some Cisco 1900 series routers.
I am trying to connect to the serial console using the provided Cisco USB console lead. The USB lead is being recognised as a CH430 device and being presented as /dev/cuaU0.
However it seems that does not matter which tool I use, be it PuTTY or cu, I cannot get a interactive session to the switch. If I power cycle the switch, I can connect and start watching the boot process. But early on, the connection is reset/dropped and I have to reconnect to continue watching the boot. At the end of the boot process, I am prompted to press 'Enter' to interact with the switch. Soon as I do so, the connection is again dropped. I can reconnect but as soon I try to interact with the switch, the connection is dropped. It is as if a certain character sequence is being treated as a escape sequence..?
If I reboot the PC into Windows and use PuTTY, I have no problem. I can interact the switch without the console connection being dropped.

Am I missing something here? I do have another USB to serial converter coming. But I do not have serial port cable for the Cisco switch and I would have loved to use the supplied USB console cable.

I have uploaded a video to youtube showing the issue:
Cisco Catalyst 3750 boot process

Any help would be appreciated, Thank you.
 

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I tried one of those USB/RJ45 rollover cables once and had similar experiences - they are absolute garbage.
Just use any cheap USB/DB9 serial adapter and the "good old" baby-blue serial rollover cables you get thrown at you with every cisco gear and it 'just works'™ I never had any problems with that combo AND you can just use it with any other serial cable you might need.
 
I tried one of those USB/RJ45 rollover cables once and had similar experiences - they are absolute garbage.
Just use any cheap USB/DB9 serial adapter and the "good old" baby-blue serial rollover cables you get thrown at you with every cisco gear and it 'just works'™ I never had any problems with that combo AND you can just use it with any other serial cable you might need.
I have already have a USB to DB9 adapter coming, but I do not have the serial rollover cable. I will organise one but I had the USB rollover cable, and it works with Windows fine. With the workaround provided by covacat, it works with FreeBSD now.
 
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