PIX 520 Hardware Surprisingly Generic
I Just pulled apart my PIX 520 to determine how much room there is for an upgrade.
What I found was a completely standard Motherboard.
The mother board has an LX440 chipset, an AGP port, USB ports, mouse ports etc.
All these ports are simply hidden behind the case.
The system also has:
A standard Pentium 2 266MHz processor.
2 Intel network cards
Finally, there is only one non standard part, a strange card with CONSOL and FAILOVER ports which connects up using an old ISA legacy port.
The card is labeled AM28F256 – 150 PC 9823MBM A
(that seems to be where the FLASH memory is stored with the OS).
I wonder if you could build a PIX out of a P2 BX chipset motherboard with an spare ISA slot simply by adding this card
My pix has really low specs, (2x16MB ram for a total of 32MB), 2MB of Flash, and a P2 266, I’m planning on swap the memory for a stick of old 66MHz 128MB SDRAM.
Then ill consider sticking in my old P2 333 (just for the hell of it). I’m also planning on removing the painfully loud case fan, the screaming noise is fine for a Server room, but its far too much for a firewall used for nothing but study and practice in my computer room.
I’m thinking of taking out the NIC cards, and sticking them in my PC to work out how standard they are. I’m also tempted to add in one of my spare Intel network cards, I wonder with the CISCO ISO will be capable of dealing with the drivers of another Intel card.
If any one has any comments, please feel free. I bought this router pretty cheep, so I’m not too worried, and I realize that most old CISCO techs will know most of what I have just discovered, so any tips will be appreciated.
(finally, I can see why they changed the nature of this model, if you stick to proprietary parts, you can be sure that all upgrades must go through you).
I Just pulled apart my PIX 520 to determine how much room there is for an upgrade.
What I found was a completely standard Motherboard.
The mother board has an LX440 chipset, an AGP port, USB ports, mouse ports etc.
All these ports are simply hidden behind the case.
The system also has:
A standard Pentium 2 266MHz processor.
2 Intel network cards
Finally, there is only one non standard part, a strange card with CONSOL and FAILOVER ports which connects up using an old ISA legacy port.
The card is labeled AM28F256 – 150 PC 9823MBM A
(that seems to be where the FLASH memory is stored with the OS).
I wonder if you could build a PIX out of a P2 BX chipset motherboard with an spare ISA slot simply by adding this card
My pix has really low specs, (2x16MB ram for a total of 32MB), 2MB of Flash, and a P2 266, I’m planning on swap the memory for a stick of old 66MHz 128MB SDRAM.
Then ill consider sticking in my old P2 333 (just for the hell of it). I’m also planning on removing the painfully loud case fan, the screaming noise is fine for a Server room, but its far too much for a firewall used for nothing but study and practice in my computer room.
I’m thinking of taking out the NIC cards, and sticking them in my PC to work out how standard they are. I’m also tempted to add in one of my spare Intel network cards, I wonder with the CISCO ISO will be capable of dealing with the drivers of another Intel card.
If any one has any comments, please feel free. I bought this router pretty cheep, so I’m not too worried, and I realize that most old CISCO techs will know most of what I have just discovered, so any tips will be appreciated.
(finally, I can see why they changed the nature of this model, if you stick to proprietary parts, you can be sure that all upgrades must go through you).
