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Hi Everyone,

I'm working on my CCNA and bought two 2501s. Both have 16megs of
flash and RAM, they are not identical, they were made at differen
times and the mainboards look slightly different. One works
perfectly. The other seems to hang at or right after the bootstrap:

-----------
System Bootstrap, Version 11.0(10c)XB2, PLATFORM SPECIFIC RELEASE
SOFTWARE
fc1)
Copyright (c) 1986-1998 by cisco
Systems
2500 processor with 14336 Kbytes of main
memory
-----------

It never goes beyond the above text. If I CTRL-BRK the router, I get
to the ">" prompt which I believe is ROMmon. If I set "o/r 0x2101",
then "i", the router will reboot, but it will once again get stuck. I
can still get into ROMmon, but I have no clue what to do beyond
that.

All of the recovery procedures that I've been able to find involved
settings 0x2101 and getting past the bootstrap then using TFTP to
download a new IOS bin file. Is it possible to do the TFTP from
within ROMmon? it seems I have some commands available to me when I
do a "?", but I don't see any way to set the IP address of the TFTP
server.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I know its pretty silly to be
wasting time on a ten year old router, but I certainly learn alot more
when things don't work right.

Nicholas

writes:
>I'm working on my CCNA and bought two 2501s. Both have 16megs of
>flash and RAM, they are not identical, they were made at differen
>times and the mainboards look slightly different. One works
>perfectly. The other seems to hang at or right after the bootstrap:

>-----------
>System Bootstrap, Version 11.0(10c)XB2, PLATFORM SPECIFIC RELEASE
>SOFTWARE
>fc1)
>Copyright (c) 1986-1998 by cisco
>Systems
>2500 processor with 14336 Kbytes of main
>memory
>-----------

>It never goes beyond the above text. If I CTRL-BRK the router, I get
>to the ">" prompt which I believe is ROMmon. If I set "o/r 0x2101",
>then "i", the router will reboot, but it will once again get stuck. I
>can still get into ROMmon, but I have no clue what to do beyond
>that.


Not a good sign. Try swapping memory between the two boxes?
Try setting the config register with bit 8000 set (o/r 0xa101)
to get more diagnostics about what is hanging inside POST.


>All of the recovery procedures that I've been able to find involved
>settings 0x2101 and getting past the bootstrap then using TFTP to
>download a new IOS bin file. Is it possible to do the TFTP from
>within ROMmon? it seems I have some commands available to me when I
>do a "?", but I don't see any way to set the IP address of the TFTP
>server.


You aren't getting far enough for password recovery. The 2501 ROMMON
doesn't support TFTP. It has a boot ROM and Flash ROM, so you could
always fall back to boot ROM to get something new TFTP'd into FlashROM.
But you are failing before any of this, you are trapped in POST.


>Any help would be greatly appreciated. I know its pretty silly to be
>wasting time on a ten year old router, but I certainly learn alot more
>when things don't work right.


Well, if you bought it from somebody, I'd do a return of it if they
offered it right away. If not, you may have a doorstop, as its not
getting past POST.

> Not a good sign. Try swapping memory between the two boxes?
> Try setting the config register with bit 8000 set (o/r 0xa101)
> to get more diagnostics about what is hanging inside POST.

I've pasted the results from 0xa101 to the bottom of this message.
Everything appears to be ok to my inexperienced eyes.

I tried swapping the memory. The "dead" router booted up and got me
to a real command prompt, though it did spit out some errors. Mainly
stating that such and such is not support etc... Maybe a version
mismatch of some kind?

Is it possible I just have a dead flash memory simm? (just to
confirm, my 2501 has three pieces of replaceable memory, the pair is
the RAM right? And the single is the Flash?

> You aren't getting far enough for password recovery. The 2501 ROMMON
> doesn't support TFTP. It has a boot ROM and Flash ROM, so you could
> always fall back to boot ROM to get something new TFTP'd into FlashROM.
> But you are failing before any of this, you are trapped in POST.

This is what I figured. Bummer.

> Well, if you bought it from somebody, I'd do a return of it if they
> offered it right away. If not, you may have a doorstop, as its not
> getting past POST.- Hide quoted text -

Good advice, though for the $20 bucks this thing cost me it isn't
worth the trouble. Plus I feel I got a good deal on the other one,
and he tossed in some AUI converters, so I won't complain.

So should I try to find a new 16meg flash simm?


----------------
Exiting boot state - setting bus error vector...[OK]
Sizing RAM and ROM...16 bit wide EPROM...8 Mbit EPROMs...32 bit wide
CPU RAM...F
ound 16 MB CPU RAM...[OK]
Testing low memory...0's...1's...address+1...[OK]
Sizing memory...writing...reading...at 0x1000804, expected 0x4000, got
0x2E00333
2 16384 pages...memsize() returned 0x01000000[OK]
Setting cookie...[OK]
Setting memory to all ones...[OK]
Setting up exception vectors...[OK]
Enabling processor caches...set CACR to 0x2101...[OK]
Processor type is: 2500[OK]
Enabling timers...[OK]
Enabling Watchdog timer...[OK]
Sizing NVRAM...found 32K bytes of NVRAM[OK]
Searching for system code...found at 1010000, magic number = 4E56...
[OK]
Setting up monitor variables...No 2MB soldered-on...16MB only...
found 14336 total Kbytes of DRAM, iomem_base set to E00000[OK]
Reading hardware revision register...
2500 processor, hardware revision = 14
Parity Logic tests...[OK]
Exiting to monitor command level

2500 processor with 14336 Kbytes of main memory
--------------------

Thanks again,
Nicholas

Hi Nicholas,

You may wish to investigate Cisco Hardware Troubleshooting:

http://www.bradreese.com/cisco-big-i...ROUBLESHOOTING

Hope this helps.

Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com

> http://www.bradreese.com/cisco-big-i...ROUBLESHOOTING


Thanks for the suggestion Brad, I had already checked out those Cisco
pages, they weren't much help. Most of the advice that's out there
implies that you have to get IOS loaded before you can fix it. (which
seems odd).

I'm guessing my Flash memory is toasted? Any else think the same?

Nicholas

wrote in
news: ps.com:

>> Not a good sign. Try swapping memory between the two boxes?
>> Try setting the config register with bit 8000 set (o/r 0xa101)
>> to get more diagnostics about what is hanging inside POST.
>
> I've pasted the results from 0xa101 to the bottom of this message.
> Everything appears to be ok to my inexperienced eyes.
>
> I tried swapping the memory. The "dead" router booted up and got me
> to a real command prompt, though it did spit out some errors. Mainly
> stating that such and such is not support etc... Maybe a version
> mismatch of some kind?
>
> Is it possible I just have a dead flash memory simm? (just to
> confirm, my 2501 has three pieces of replaceable memory, the pair is
> the RAM right? And the single is the Flash?
>
>> You aren't getting far enough for password recovery. The 2501 ROMMON
>> doesn't support TFTP. It has a boot ROM and Flash ROM, so you could
>> always fall back to boot ROM to get something new TFTP'd into
>> FlashROM. But you are failing before any of this, you are trapped in
>> POST.
>
> This is what I figured. Bummer.
>
>> Well, if you bought it from somebody, I'd do a return of it if they
>> offered it right away. If not, you may have a doorstop, as its not
>> getting past POST.- Hide quoted text -
>
> Good advice, though for the $20 bucks this thing cost me it isn't
> worth the trouble. Plus I feel I got a good deal on the other one,
> and he tossed in some AUI converters, so I won't complain.
>
> So should I try to find a new 16meg flash simm?
>
>
> ----------------
> Exiting boot state - setting bus error vector...[OK]
> Sizing RAM and ROM...16 bit wide EPROM...8 Mbit EPROMs...32 bit wide
> CPU RAM...F
> ound 16 MB CPU RAM...[OK]
> Testing low memory...0's...1's...address+1...[OK]
> Sizing memory...writing...reading...at 0x1000804, expected 0x4000, got
> 0x2E00333
> 2 16384 pages...memsize() returned 0x01000000[OK]
> Setting cookie...[OK]
> Setting memory to all ones...[OK]
> Setting up exception vectors...[OK]
> Enabling processor caches...set CACR to 0x2101...[OK]
> Processor type is: 2500[OK]
> Enabling timers...[OK]
> Enabling Watchdog timer...[OK]
> Sizing NVRAM...found 32K bytes of NVRAM[OK]
> Searching for system code...found at 1010000, magic number = 4E56...
> [OK]
> Setting up monitor variables...No 2MB soldered-on...16MB only...
> found 14336 total Kbytes of DRAM, iomem_base set to E00000[OK]
> Reading hardware revision register...
> 2500 processor, hardware revision = 14
> Parity Logic tests...[OK]
> Exiting to monitor command level
>
> 2500 processor with 14336 Kbytes of main memory
> --------------------
>
> Thanks again,
> Nicholas
>

i believe you will find that the single simm is the ram and the pair is
the flash memory.

f