7507 IOS/pcmcia problems

[V11]

I have several 7507's I'm trying to upgrade. Each one has a 32mb Cisco linear card in slot0:. On one router, I formatted the card and then tftp'd the new IOS over to the card. Then, after changing the boot parameter to reflect the new code name, the router was booted and came up fine on the new code. I took the pcmcia card and moved it to another, identically configured router, and it could not boot from the card--I could see the files on the card and write to it, but I couldn't boot. Files that I write to the card don't show up:

982SDC_TEST_7507#copy run slot0:start-back
Destination filename [start-back]?
20484 bytes copied in 1.564 secs (20484 bytes/sec)
982SDC_TEST_7507#dir
Directory of slot0:/

1 -rw- 20029692 Aug 25 2003 08:53:10 rsp-ik9sv-mz.122-15.T5.bin
2 -rw- 6416 Aug 25 2003 10:18:29 test-startup


So, I put the card back in the original router and now it won't boot. I have tried multiple pcmcia cards. Any ideas?

 

[jimmyzz]

V11,
There may be many possible causes, so you'll have to isolate it down. Probable faults are:
1. Corrupt IOS file
2. Startup-file
3. Bad flash card.

Check if your IOS image on the flash can be read by your 7507. I assume it is booting into ROMMON mode now so see if you can boot the IOS manually:
rommon 1> dir slot0: (check to see if the IOS file is listed)
rommon 2> boot slot0:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.bin
If it loads okay, then your router can read the flash, so it eliminates fault 1 and 3, hence your startup file or the ability for your router to locate is the problem. As you have stated, your startup file should have the config line to boot the flash;
boot system flash slot0:xxxxxxxxxxxx.bin

If you can not manually load the IOS, then your problem lies with fault 1 or 3. Let us know how you go, we can troubleshoot further once you've isolated the problem down.

JimmyZ

 

[V11]

It turns out that the code we were upgrading from was a custom version. Any linear card that was formatted or written to by that version of code immediately became unusable in any other router. The upgrade solution was to format a card with the custom version of code, copy the image to it from an ata card, reload the router, and immediately format the card with the new version of code and recopy the image. Incidentally, booting with an ata style card took over 8 minutes---there is a known problem with 7507's and certain versions of code take a long time to load from ata.