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In addition to the other postings on the Classic PIX, my gamble worked - and now I have a nice 400MHz PIX - read how I did it below:
Contrary to what Cisco might tell you, it is possible to get your old Cisco PIX units working at up to 400MHz! Cisco classic firewalls are those with serial numbers below 06002015, as I mentioned in earlier articles. At the time, Cisco was using a socket 7 motherboard from Intel called the Zappa Adv/ZE E. It’s a pretty typical motherboard of the era – 4 PCI slots, 4 ISA, and the good old Intel FX chipset. The Cisco Classic that we had, about 5 years old, had a Pentium 133MHz for the CPU.
The more I thought about it, the more I figured that there was no reason this system couldn’t be overdriven the same as any other aging socket 7 board. I contacted Evertech’s Evergreen Overdrives division and asked their opinion of my idea. Overdriving a PIX firewall had never been attempted, but they figured the same as me and thought that it might work. I went ahead and ordered the overdrive.
A few days later, I received the Evergreen Spectra 400 overdrive and all its material. The overdrive uses an AMD K6-2 450 Processor mounted on a voltage regulator and clock multiplier board that fits into the existing socket 7. It can clock anywhere from a 2X multiplier to a 6X multiplier, just in case you can’t get the full 6X after the upgrade. The maximum bus speed available in the old board (as with any older socket 7) is 66MHz. 400 MHz is a result of 6 time 66MHz (which is 398Mhz).
Now, to get started, there was some disassembly required on the PIX. The back plate of the PIX has to be unscrewed and removed so that you can plug a keyboard into the motherboard. You’ll also need to insert a video card into the board so that you can see what you’re doing. I removed the flash card as well as the two Ethernet cards, just to make sure nothing would cause any unforeseen conflicts. After switching the unit on, there was a brief post, then a message that it needed a bootable disk. Don’t put the overdrive in just yet – you need to flash the BIOS first. Don’t forget to make a bootable BIN on a floppy of your current PIX software and config, since the flash will likely get erased when the card is removed.
Evertech provides a boot disk with their overdrive in order to test your machine (to determine the motherboard and BIOS type) then provide a means to flash it. Unfortunately, their boot disk uses Caldera’s DR-DOS, which the Intel Zappa motherboard doesn’t seem to get along with! I created an MS-DOS 6.22 boot disk then just copied over the contents of the disk Evertech provided.
During the first boot, the disk looks a diagnostics program that examines your system configuration and motherboard type to determine whether you need to have the BIOS flashed or not. Part of the reason for the flash is simple – your motherboard likely won’t see the K6-2 without it! Another reason is more performance-related. K6-2’s introduced advanced write allocation, MMX and 3DNow! instructions to the older architecture, but without information in the BIOS on these features, they won’t be utilized. In the case of the Firewall, the write allocation is the only one you’ll likely benefit from, but it’s still a great performance increase over the old Pentium architecture.
After the first boot, the disk instructs you to use the CD-ROM (also shipped with the overdrive) to copy the flash files to the floppy. This can be done on another machine. Once finished, boot the firewall again from the floppy. This time, there is an option to update the BIOS, select it, then just follow whatever instructions or directions that appear during the flash. Once complete, switch off the PIX.
Now you can remove the old Pentium and add the overdrive unit. On our PIX, I left it on the default settings, which are 2.2v and 6X multiplier. If you were running a Pentium 100 or 133, then you were already at 66MHz Bus. If it was a 90 or 120 Pentium, then the bus was 60MHz, and if it was a Pentium 75, then it was 50MHz. Whatever the bus speed was originally, set it to 66MHz (the dip switch and labels are right on the motherboard). Make sure the overdrive is firmly in place, then clip the fan on. In my case, I had the reverse the fan’s clip in order to get it to fit the firewall, but that’s only a 7 second adjustment, so don’t worry. Make sure to connect the power to the fan, and plug the fan into the overdrive’s fan plug as it also operates part of the overdrive unit.
Above is the overdrive and heatsink mounted in the PIX. To its right, you can see the motherboard's DIP switches, the last two of which are used for Bus speed.
Turn the PIX back on and remove your floppy disk. The first boot will give you a message that CMOS has failed and that the defaults are being restored – this is normal, don’t worry. Enter the BIOS and configure it accordingly, then restart. Upon the first boot after setting the BIOS, you’ll likely need to reload the PIX software from your backup disk, but once that’s complete, you now have a 400MHz firewall!
400MHz, just as a note, is faster by far than Cisco’s best PIX today, which is only 233MHz. The Classic PIX remains somewhat limited by the 512k flash, but at least it’s now ready to handle anything you might throw at it… not to mention you now have some unique bragging rights.
I hope this helps you to re-deploy your older PIX machines without having to pay Cisco thousands of dollars for less powerful upgrades. Good luck everyone!
[sig][/sig]
Contrary to what Cisco might tell you, it is possible to get your old Cisco PIX units working at up to 400MHz! Cisco classic firewalls are those with serial numbers below 06002015, as I mentioned in earlier articles. At the time, Cisco was using a socket 7 motherboard from Intel called the Zappa Adv/ZE E. It’s a pretty typical motherboard of the era – 4 PCI slots, 4 ISA, and the good old Intel FX chipset. The Cisco Classic that we had, about 5 years old, had a Pentium 133MHz for the CPU.
The more I thought about it, the more I figured that there was no reason this system couldn’t be overdriven the same as any other aging socket 7 board. I contacted Evertech’s Evergreen Overdrives division and asked their opinion of my idea. Overdriving a PIX firewall had never been attempted, but they figured the same as me and thought that it might work. I went ahead and ordered the overdrive.
A few days later, I received the Evergreen Spectra 400 overdrive and all its material. The overdrive uses an AMD K6-2 450 Processor mounted on a voltage regulator and clock multiplier board that fits into the existing socket 7. It can clock anywhere from a 2X multiplier to a 6X multiplier, just in case you can’t get the full 6X after the upgrade. The maximum bus speed available in the old board (as with any older socket 7) is 66MHz. 400 MHz is a result of 6 time 66MHz (which is 398Mhz).
Now, to get started, there was some disassembly required on the PIX. The back plate of the PIX has to be unscrewed and removed so that you can plug a keyboard into the motherboard. You’ll also need to insert a video card into the board so that you can see what you’re doing. I removed the flash card as well as the two Ethernet cards, just to make sure nothing would cause any unforeseen conflicts. After switching the unit on, there was a brief post, then a message that it needed a bootable disk. Don’t put the overdrive in just yet – you need to flash the BIOS first. Don’t forget to make a bootable BIN on a floppy of your current PIX software and config, since the flash will likely get erased when the card is removed.
Evertech provides a boot disk with their overdrive in order to test your machine (to determine the motherboard and BIOS type) then provide a means to flash it. Unfortunately, their boot disk uses Caldera’s DR-DOS, which the Intel Zappa motherboard doesn’t seem to get along with! I created an MS-DOS 6.22 boot disk then just copied over the contents of the disk Evertech provided.
During the first boot, the disk looks a diagnostics program that examines your system configuration and motherboard type to determine whether you need to have the BIOS flashed or not. Part of the reason for the flash is simple – your motherboard likely won’t see the K6-2 without it! Another reason is more performance-related. K6-2’s introduced advanced write allocation, MMX and 3DNow! instructions to the older architecture, but without information in the BIOS on these features, they won’t be utilized. In the case of the Firewall, the write allocation is the only one you’ll likely benefit from, but it’s still a great performance increase over the old Pentium architecture.
After the first boot, the disk instructs you to use the CD-ROM (also shipped with the overdrive) to copy the flash files to the floppy. This can be done on another machine. Once finished, boot the firewall again from the floppy. This time, there is an option to update the BIOS, select it, then just follow whatever instructions or directions that appear during the flash. Once complete, switch off the PIX.
Now you can remove the old Pentium and add the overdrive unit. On our PIX, I left it on the default settings, which are 2.2v and 6X multiplier. If you were running a Pentium 100 or 133, then you were already at 66MHz Bus. If it was a 90 or 120 Pentium, then the bus was 60MHz, and if it was a Pentium 75, then it was 50MHz. Whatever the bus speed was originally, set it to 66MHz (the dip switch and labels are right on the motherboard). Make sure the overdrive is firmly in place, then clip the fan on. In my case, I had the reverse the fan’s clip in order to get it to fit the firewall, but that’s only a 7 second adjustment, so don’t worry. Make sure to connect the power to the fan, and plug the fan into the overdrive’s fan plug as it also operates part of the overdrive unit.
Above is the overdrive and heatsink mounted in the PIX. To its right, you can see the motherboard's DIP switches, the last two of which are used for Bus speed.
Turn the PIX back on and remove your floppy disk. The first boot will give you a message that CMOS has failed and that the defaults are being restored – this is normal, don’t worry. Enter the BIOS and configure it accordingly, then restart. Upon the first boot after setting the BIOS, you’ll likely need to reload the PIX software from your backup disk, but once that’s complete, you now have a 400MHz firewall!
400MHz, just as a note, is faster by far than Cisco’s best PIX today, which is only 233MHz. The Classic PIX remains somewhat limited by the 512k flash, but at least it’s now ready to handle anything you might throw at it… not to mention you now have some unique bragging rights.
I hope this helps you to re-deploy your older PIX machines without having to pay Cisco thousands of dollars for less powerful upgrades. Good luck everyone![sig][/sig]
