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Cisco PIX506 Flash upgrade

This is directed to the hardware hackers and possibly the FrankenPIX crowd....

Has anybody succesfully upgrade a PIX506 from the native 8MB Flash to

16MB Flash??

The Main Board has a single Intel 8MB Strata Flash chip soldered in place. There is no socket for another flash chip, however there is an empty chip pad next to the existing flash chip. It appears to be a pad for another Flash chip, similar to the existing chip. I was able to locate a couple of the flash chips. Wasn't easy as they are discontinued. I soldered the second chip in place. The PIX boots fine, but doesn't recognize the additional 8MB of Flash.

I'm assuming that there may be a support component that needs to be added or a jumper pad that needs to be bridged or cut. Or maybe it could need a jumper changed.... I'm hesitant to go very far with changing jumpers since I haven't been able to find any documentation on their purposes.

Any ideas out there????

Reply to
digital_dictator
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Hi digital_dictator,

Brad Ellis, Dual CCIE No. 5796 Security / Routing & Switching has covered this well on his SecurityIE, The Security Internetworking Experts Forum:

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Sincerely,

Brad Reese Cisco vs. Competitor Lab Tests

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Reply to
www.BradReese.Com

Thanks!!! I'll check it out... I had a suspicion I wasn't the first to attempt this...

Reply to
digital_dictator

Reply to
Rainer Tammer

I was also unable to find anything that seemed relevant to my specific question.

Although I think I have come to a conclusion that I've not been able to verify.

My intent with the flash upgrade was to allow me to load PIXv7 code on the 506 (so I can use it for studies and labs for the new upgraded CCSP PIX tests). When I attempt to load it with the current 8MB of Flash, I get some indications that there there is not enough flash to load the image. This is even AFTER removing the PDM code from flash as suggested in various discussion threads. The PIX I have is a 506, not the 506E. I was kinda assuming that the 506E may have had 16MB of flash, but I have since discovered that most of the "v7 code on PIX506E" threads indicate 8MB in use there also.

I have discovered that the 506 and 506E used different flash chips, and also had different revisions of BIOS (506=v4.0 ; 506E=v4.2).

My current assumption is that the v7.0 code will not load on the 506 due to the BIOS differences, and maybe possibly due to the differnet type of flash in use.

Ra> Hello,

Reply to
digital_dictator

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