2501 Bootrom upgrade question

I have recently purchased a 2501 for CCNA studies( it was actually thrown in for free with a 2950 switch I bought) and I was looking on eBay for memory to max it out with 16/16. I found some memory that came a along with a warning stating that I might need a bootrom upgrade in order to use the memory. The key word being "might", I was wondering how valid this statement is. I don't really want to have to purchase new bootrom chips. Any insight is appreciated, thanks.

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tech-airman

motherwolf wrote:

I have recently purchased a 2501 for CCNA studies( it was actually thrown in for free with a 2950 switch I bought) and I was looking on eBay for memory to max it out with 16/16. I found some memory that came a along with a warning stating that I might need a bootrom upgrade in order to use the memory. The key word being "might", I was wondering how valid this statement is. I don't really want to have to purchase new bootrom chips. Any insight is appreciated, thanks.

motherwolf,

What kind of memory, flash or ram?

mikej412

I upgraded all my 4.x ROMs so that I could use 3rd party memory. I've still got some 5.2 versions that work fine with the 3rd party memory. And all my other 2500s are running a variant of the 11.0(10c) ROMs.

If you do a show version it should tell you the ROM version.

motherwolf

Here's my sh ver. Thanks.

Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software
IOS (tm) 2500 Software (C2500-I-L), Version 12.0(21a), RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)
Copyright (c) 1986-2002 by cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Sat 02-Feb-02 04:22 by nmasa
Image text-base: 0x0302F5F0, data-base: 0x00001000

ROM: System Bootstrap, Version 5.2(5), RELEASE SOFTWARE
BOOTFLASH: 3000 Bootstrap Software (IGS-RXBOOT), Version 10.2(5), RELEASE SOFTWA
RE (fc1)

System restarted by power-on
System image file is "flash:/c2500-i-l.120-21a.bin"

cisco 2500 (68030) processor (revision D) with 4096K/2048K bytes of memory.
Processor board ID 01787797, with hardware revision 00000000
Bridging software.
X.25 software, Version 3.0.0.
1 Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interface(s)
2 Serial network interface(s)
32K bytes of non-volatile configuration memory.
8192K bytes of processor board System flash (Read ONLY)

Configuration register is 0x2102

mikej412

motherwolf wrote:

ROM: System Bootstrap, Version 5.2(5), RELEASE SOFTWARE
BOOTFLASH: 3000 Bootstrap Software (IGS-RXBOOT), Version 10.2(5), RELEASE SOFTWA
RE (fc1)

Probably will work. I've got 6 2500s running a couple different 5.x versions and they are all 16/16 -- and I remember upgrading the memory on a few of them.

I think I paid $7 + postage for the ROM upgrades for the 2500s that were running the 4.x version -- just in case

motherwolf

Thanks Mike,
I guess I'll take the plunge and see what happens.