Ajira.eu

Last week I told about an old Cisco PIX 515 that we found under a big layer of dust in the warehouse. The firewall works like a charm, no comments there. The only problem is that it has only 2 network interfaces, and I actually need 3. Fortunately, it has 2 empty PCI slots, so putting in an extra network card shouldn't be an issue.

And so the search for an extra network card began. A bit of searching in the Internet told me that the Cisco PIX 515 only supports network cards with specific Intel i8255x chipsets. These cards are sold as the Cisco PIX-1FE. Unfortunately, this card isn't available anymore from Cisco or retailers.

After a lot of searching I found a website that sells the Cisco PIX-1FE. Unfortunately this website charges $ 240,- for shipping to Europe, regardless of the size of the package that needs to be sent. So I would end up paying $ 240.- to send one single network card (that weighs maybe 100 grams at most) from the United States to Europe. That is quite retarded, and so I make the bold statement that usedcisco.com is useless for customers outside of the United States.

A quick peek on E-bay showed me that a German company sold a PIX-1FE for € 26,- plus € 18,- for shipping. Quite the difference with usedcisco.com, I'd say. I made the order, and 2 days later the package arrived. After testing the network card in a normal computer, and having verified that the network card actually works, I decided to put it in the Cisco PIX 515.

Suddenly the Cisco PIX 515 refused to boot. It gave an error message telling me that the keyboard and floppy drive are missing (aruh?). I verified that the network card has the correct chipset, and tried the other PCI slot, which basically produced the same error. If I put a different network card in it, the Cisco boots fine, but gives a message which tells that the network card is not supported and will be ignored. But putting in the PIX-1FE causes the Cisco to think that it needs a keyboard and a floppy drive. Plugging a keyboard in the USB port doesn't help, by the way.

This is quite messed up... The Cisco PIX 515 works fine... the network card works fine... but together they don't work at all! I need to find either another PIX-1FE, and pray that it will work; or find another solution. Needless to say: Ajira is not amused.