Cisco 1841 hardware upgrades

Price of used Cisco 1841 routers, which should be great for CCNA, greatly wavers by the amount of memory they have. As I understand it's easy to upgrade CF from 32MB to 64MB in order to house larger IOS images. However, is it equally easy to upgrade RAM? As far as I know, Cisco 1841 uses 144-pin SDR SDRAM SO-DIMM memory modules. Am I correct, that any notebook 256MB 144-pin SDR SDRAM SO-DIMM memory module is suitable to complement the integrated 128MB one(totally 384MB)?

integrated 128MB RAM + free SODIMM slot:

All comments/suggestions regarding to Cisco 1841 memory upgrades are most welcome

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Comments

notgoing2fail

Interesting. So you have to open her up huh?

I have the 1811 wireless router. In the front there's a 32MB flash card that I pull out for easy upgrade....I wonder why they didn't do the same for the 1841?

mikem2te

m4rtin wrote: »

Price of used Cisco 1841 routers, which should be great for CCNA, greatly wavers by the amount of memory they have. As I understand it's easy to upgrade CF from 32MB to 64MB in order to house larger IOS images. However, is it equally easy to upgrade RAM? As far as I know, Cisco 1841 uses 144-pin SDR SDRAM SO-DIMM memory modules. Am I correct, that any notebook 256MB 144-pin SDR SDRAM SO-DIMM memory module is suitable to complement the integrated 128MB one(totally 384MB)?

integrated 128MB RAM + free SODIMM slot:

All comments/suggestions regarding to Cisco 1841 memory upgrades are most welcome

Should be simple as you say. Cisco memory is expensive but in some cases generic memory can be installed. I recently upgraded my 2801's and 2621XM's to max ram, only problem I had was sourcing the memory as small capacity ram is not commonly available any more.

ebay came to my rescue-

MEM2801-256D 256MB Router Memory for Cisco 2801 NEW on eBay (end time 29-Mar-10 17:31:11 BST)

Looks like he got 1841 ram too, I've used the guy twice and had no problems. YMMV.

hermeszdata

notgoing2fail wrote: »

Interesting. So you have to open her up huh?

I have the 1811 wireless router. In the front there's a 32MB flash card that I pull out for easy upgrade....I wonder why they didn't do the same for the 1841?

They did!

m4rtin

Thanks for replies! Are there any other hardware variations of Cisco 1841? I mean if CF card and SDRAM module can be easely upgraded, then is there anything else to check when buying Cisco 1841 router?

tiersten

Whether there is an AIM inside.
What WIC/HWICs it has in the slots.
What memory it has.
What size CF card it has.

Thats about it. The 1841 doesn't support DC power at all so you don't need to worry about that.

I guess you can check the hardware revision but I don't believe it actually makes a difference to the end user. I've not seen any errata or bug reports that depend on the hardware revision of an 1841.

mikem2te

m4rtin wrote: »

Thanks for replies! Are there any other hardware variations of Cisco 1841? I mean if CF card and SDRAM module can be easely upgraded, then is there anything else to check when buying Cisco 1841 router?

Officially you need to use Cisco CF cards but loads of people have had success using cheaper branded CF cards.

I got a couple of Sandisk CF cards for my 2801's and they work well. The routers don't like cards with a capacity greater than the router supports - does that take the award for "most obvious comment of the year"?. Rather than the router using as much of the flash as it supports, the router locks up.

notgoing2fail

mikem2te wrote: »

Officially you need to use Cisco CF cards but loads of people have had success using cheaper branded CF cards.

I got a couple of Sandisk CF cards for my 2801's and they work well. The routers don't like cards with a capacity greater than the router supports - does that take the award for "most obvious comment of the year"?. Rather than the router using as much of the flash as it supports, the router locks up.

I don't think so. I didn't know that, and I think it's good to know, only experience can teach you that....

m4rtin

tiersten wrote: »

Whether there is an AIM inside.
What WIC/HWICs it has in the slots.

Is it important to have for example VPN AIM card or some kind of WIC/HWIC inside if we talk about CCNA/CCNP lab? I mean are there some questions about for example ADSL, so it would be a good idea to have ADSL HWIC

mikem2te

m4rtin wrote: »

Is it important to have for example VPN AIM card or some kind of WIC/HWIC inside if we talk about CCNA/CCNP lab? I mean are there some questions about for example ADSL, so it would be a good idea to have ADSL HWIC

You don't need anything specific in the router. Serial ports are nice (WIC-1T or WIC-2T) for labbing WAN / Frame relay connections. An ADSL Wic is nice also if you want to connect the router to a broadband connection, a WIC-1ADSL is pretty cheap nowadays but only supports ADSL1 upto 8MB/S. A HWIC-1ADSL supports ADSL/ADSL2 and ADSL2+ for upto 24MB/S but are still very expensive even in the second hand market.

m4rtin

Thanks for help! I'll order Cisco 1841 32MB/128MB + WIC-1T card as a first router for my CCIA/CCNP studies