Cisco 1941 ISR router teardown an detailed overview for CCNA lab and repair

Complete tear-down and overview of a Cisco 1941 ISR G2 series router, which are real good devices for small businesses and for being used at a branch office site.

In the video I try to answer the question whether this is a good router for CCNA candidates and small businesses.

In the first portion of the video the hardware and the motherboard is being analyzed in detail from the point of view of a CCNA certification.
In the second portion I make a 10X magnification of the components, and explain their functionality for component-level repair technicians.

Sorry for the dark video, but in spite of 6000 Lumen of light my
Canon Rebel T3i DSLR makes worse movies than a potato.

Parts list for the Mainboard discussed in the video:
====================================
Main Processor: Cavium Octeon Plus CN5220
Physical IO chip for Layer1: Marvell 88E114-NNC1 Gigabit PHY
FPGA: Xilinx Spartan XC3S200A
RAM: 512MB DDR2 RAM
NVRAM: 24C02H (2Kbit EEPROM)
ROMMON: 25P40VP 4Mbit Flash
Flash: Cisco 512MB compact flash card
Serial Console: ADM2209 RS232 transceiver
Real-Time-Clock: DS1337C

Parts list for the components:
====================================
U3M LT6105?
U4M RC1K=LMV321
U3F 24C02H
U200PS 17-9330 Custom or rebrand
U1M 17-9329 Custom or rebrand
U1Q AB12818 (no datasheet)
U26P MIC5209MY
U1K DS1337C
U2K Pericom P16LC4831AZBIE (no datasheet)
U1J NXP VC2244A
U6C Texas Instruments 385B25
3.3V to 2.5V: 2* LDDW221 in parallel
U117E=U116E=U115E IDT Q534X245Q3G (PCIe Switch?)
U15W Marvell 98DX-LKJ1 (no datasheet)
U3T Zarlink ZL30110
U3I 25P40VP 4Mbit Flash
U1I Xilinx Spartan XC3S200A
U1F Spansion S99-50283 Flash (no datasheet)
U1N=U7C=U1J VC2244A
U1U Micrel 2026 USB power controller
U7CN CY7C64215-28PVXC USB controller
U1G0=U1G1 Marvell 88E114-NNC1
U6CN ADM2209EARUZ
U2A0 Texas Instruments LC08A
U11P BZN T1 2929 Linear regulator (no datasheet?)
RAM Samsung K4T1G1604F 1Gbit DDR2

[exxr]

back to the cpu, it seems Cisco (and also Juniper, who uses these Octeons in their SRX) don't fully make use of the hardware accelerated ASIC-type features present in this chip. the only company that appears to make full use is ubiquiti with their edgerouter series.

these devices like ER-lite and ER-8 use the cavium offload features for IPv4/6 forwarding, firewall, VLAN, PPPoE and of course IPSEC making them blisteringly fast for their size. just about the only thing they don't have offload support for is QoS.

[robertxiong]

Hey again! How do you know what chip does what? I'm very interested to know how you know! For example @14:37, how do you know that's NVRAM and not something else? Did you work for cisco?

[yvettelaudat]

Mr. Don Key, you keep it real. I am referring to your opinion on buying this router. Here is my scenario. I was doing a CCNA Security Lab with three 2800 routers and 2 3750 switches. This lab is called Securing the Router for Administrative Access. The commands stopped working on page 29. For example: cryptographic-algorithm hmac-sha-256. I tried the original ios and changing out my ios to a security ios and that did not work. I bought 3x 1941 routers so I could do these labs. My routers have a security package on them. Tonight the first problem that I ran into is that one router boots into rommon mode. It has its compact flash missing and the black tab is sticking out. I am currently trying to work out this situation so I can run my found a solution on YouTube: Recover Cisco Router using tftpdnld command_rommon. My result after trying this is:

TFTP: Error, insufficient flash installed to load image.
TFTP: Operation terminated.

[vikaspotadar]

What are recommended router for homelab??

[mattwilson]

Thanks Don, very informative. What RAM module fits into the DIMM slot? What is the max sized RAM that can be used?

[ZaxManD]

Hi,
Im considering getting a 1941 for home use, and im looking in to ways there i can mod it for a better cooling (less noice) i see you dont remove smaller heatsink, can it be replaced, or is it epoxy glued on?

[yvettelaudat]

Hi. I got the last response. The guy
who i bought it from on ebay us helping me with it. I am about to carry the router to a Best Buy and get help with it. I will get the compact flash and help opening the cf slot. Can't open it.

[andromedaworld]

how to disable onboard memory if any memory chip is faulty so that use slot memory to make it working

[echoesandwonder]

How can i contact you bro? Can i ask different question?

[yvettelaudat]

Hi. I just came from best buy. They only sell cf cards 32G and higher. The max my router takes (Cisco spec sheet for 1941) is 4G. Also went to Walmart and they don't have it.

[anilemailsharma]

How to disable onboard memory on cisco 1941

[stevenhulme]

Hi.How can I contact you. I repair Cisco equipment everyday and would like to ask 1 question. Thanks

[morlock]

Gentlemen, what kind of RAM (1Gb or 2Gb) can be installed in this router? Plain non-ECC unbuffered? And what is the frequency: PC2-5300 or PC2-6400?

[yvettelaudat]

The guy at best buy opened the cf slot for me. I put the cf card from the good router into the bad router. (The router that was booting into rommon) This is the message I got:
This is what I am seeing on my screen currently:

*Jan 5 19:42:41.575: %SMC-2-BAD_ID_HW: Failed Identification Test in 0/-1/-1 [7/0]

The module in 0/-1/-1 in this router may not be a genuine
Cisco product. Cisco warranties and support programs only
apply to genuine Cisco products. If Cisco determines that
your insertion of non-Cisco memory, WIC cards, AIM cards,
Network Modules, SPA cards, GBICs or other modules into a
Cisco product is the cause of a support issue, Cisco may
deny support under your warranty or under a Cisco support
program such as SmartNet.


*Jan 5 19:42:56.815: %FILESYS-5-CF: System CompactFlash 0 removed
*Jan 5 19:43:41.575: %SMC-2-BAD_ID_HW: Failed Identification Test in 0/-1/-1 [7/0]

The message kept coming back.
We thought my vwic3 card might not be an authentic Cisco product. I moved my vwic3 card over from EHWIC0 to EHWIC1 and still got the same message referring to the same slot. He thought it might be the PVDM card. I didn't put one in so this gentleman is sending me another router on Monday.

[solaimankhan]

Cisco 1941 ISR router Power Supply repair video require

[EveryDayLifeChannel]

A lab is for people who've never seen a router and switch in person
and are not mechanically inclined. Save your money and practice
on packet tracer!