I need to upgrade the flash in my two 2500 routers to be able to install IOS 12. I was told I may need to replace the boot roms with the XB2 variety in order to support the additional flash. Is this the true?
Also, is there any benefit to upgrading the DRAM in these boxes? I read that the 2500 series reads the IOS directly off the flash and not into RAM, so is there any benefit (or is it even possible) to upgrading to
16MB of DRAM? Bootstrap/boot rom version and current flash configuration is listed below.
Lastly, how concerned should I be about the CONFIG_NEWER and MALLOCFAIL messages?
From memory, the only way to update a Boot Rom on a 2500 was to REPLACE the actual chipset! They are Square PGA's and socketed, but you need the physical chip and getting them may be next to impossible these days. I did this once on a couple of 2500's many many years ago (like 1995/96???)
There are 2 main types of 2500 (that I am aware of), 99% of them run from RAM, however a low cost "entry" model was available that may have run from Flash. I can't rmember the title of that model (2500 Pro sort of rings a bell) but it was fairly unique so it would be pretty obvious. You do NOT want this later model, their performance sucks, even for a lowly 2500, and are so limited...
A 2500 is pretty much useless these days and ALL would need 16MB RAM and 16MB Flash (IE maxed out in both) to be usable. Some models had
2MB RAM "built in" so you could end up with 18MB RAM, but that is the absolute limit they can handle.
CONFIG_NEWER means that the config was WRITTEN from a MORE recent version of IOS (in your case 11.1) than the verison suported by ROMON (11.0) and those statements will be dropped. Its just a warning, things will probaly still run.
MALLOC FALL means not enough RAM (Memory Allocation Failure). This error means that 6MB of RAM is not enough for the IOS image you are trying to load (this confirms it is loading the image into RAM), its short by at least 5+MB.......;-).
The line that reads -
Means that the BOOT ROM image is running from Flash, not IOS.
About all you can easily do is upgrade the device to 16MB of RAM and see if that boots ok. What version of IOS are you trying to load (full image name would help).
Probably not needed. The only reason you need boot ROM updates on these boxes are to support writing to newer flash chips. If the boot ROM you have supports writing to the Flash chips you have, you're good to go.
Almost all the new versions require maxed out DRAM and Flash on these b
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