Cisco PIX Device Manager VPN

We'll take a look at a Cisco PIX 515e firewall unit, perform a Noctua fan mod on it, install PDM 3.0 and get a VPN setup!

Rack stuff

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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

00:00 Intro
01:05 PIX 515e Hardware Overview
02:57 Serial Management
03:46 Cisco Secure ACS Sneak Peek
04:39 Hooking up the 515e
07:11 Noctua Fan Mod
12:52 Looking at the 515e's PCI Cards
20:38 Configuring the PIX 515e
23:34 Installing PDM
25:30 Running and Using PDM
27:39 Setting up VPN Access with the Wizard
28:57 Physical Network Setup
30:10 Using Cisco VPN Client
32:43 Outro

[jfbeam]

Those little copper ears are indeed for grounding. Because it's not _actually_ metal-on-metal, there's a gap, and RF can leak through it. But it's not enough of a gap for the spongy mesh stuff. If I hadn't put things through UL and FCC testing, I'd question those things too. There's a lot of unusual things done to get those certification logos.

[dapullia]

I can confirm that copy and paste of saved configuration script text files to a serial terminal is exactly how you would manage this generation of Cisco equipment. I studied CCNA back in high school and we worked on this generation of equipment in our lab environment. You would have all of your configs saved to text files in case you had the “Oh <redacted>!” moment. I remember a passing requirement for the course was that you had to troubleshoot and bring up an entire 5 router network correctly. You had exactly 5 minutes to repair the entire company’s network or you’re fired for the purposes of the test. A second test was that we had to bring up a Cisco router of this generation from nothing to fully configured for memory without saved config files by hand in less than 3 minutes and yes it was a class performance standard. You would have to learn all of the short commands. Most of them can be shortened to 2 to 3 characters. Good memories but it’s been 25ish years since then for me and I ended up going into application development myself instead of networking.

[kunarnav]

It was written in the manual that use a known bad hp ddr1 ram stick to open the cover up
-Clabretro 2024 and Cisco 2000's

[DanielTekmyster]

I built several franken pix firewalls in my dat, intel 1000TX worked for me, both fiber and copper.

[JZB-]

When I started my job as network engineer, I was given a Cisco style console cable that went straight to USB-C instead of the usual DB-9. Super Handy

[cromulence]

I got into old Macs a little while ago and my mind was blown by the fact that Apple had a 'gigabit ethernet' model of G4 Mac shipping in July 2000. It's built into the main logic board too so you don't lose a PCI slot. The gigabit chip gets toasty and has a heatsink on it - makes me chuckle when you think how pedestrian gigabit controllers are now.

[KJBZC]

After living in ASDM (which is the very similar equivalent for the newer ASA firewalls) at my work for the past month or so, I must say I love the simplicity of the PIX lol. Great demo, makes me want to get one of these to add to the collection of far EOL'd networking equipment to obsess over...

[kenmurphy]

PDM rocks! I have a little Cisco PIX 501, best little firewall ever! Great Video clabretro, love your channel! ISDN next please

[markpriceful]

wow, nice job enabling remote work for your enterprise users with the Cisco VPN! I am also shocked it "just worked" out of the box

[LBFH]

I love these Sunday morning flashbacks to old Cisco gear. Had a lot of fun setting up both office to office and client VPN's on these 😁

[truckerallikatuk]

Those copper things are for EMI reduction. It was a common technique at that time. I have a pile of them from cases.

[Dygear]

*Inhales deeply -- Exhales while saying:* Fuckin' Java.

[TheStefanskoglund]

3:15 i believe the RJ socket is a fair bit less expensive and it is more compact too, so less area wasted on the rear of a device

[AnonyDave]

Oh dear, pdm. I don't think I ever heard a good word about it when I had to deal with a few pix devices around 2004. Or rather it was so bad, no one ever used it. It was all ssh and *shudder* telnet (but thankfully telnet was rarely used by then). cli management is fine for most network gear, but I definitely find with complex acls and nat rules on a firewall then a gui with a table of all your rules is just soo much easier to look at.

edit: as a note, I see you trying to get a gig card working in it. Franken pixes were a thing back then, the software itself only supports a handful of intel chipsets

[KonradParzymieso]

The nightmares of config pasting and instantly being taken by box welcome to OG Cisco

[juanstdio]

thanks to you, I have a proxmox server with a late 2008 mac.. and some 2000's devices to play with... man I love this channel

[JoshsYouTube]

That fan is worth more $ than the PIX. XD I remember these PIX devices, they were dated and slated to be replaced when i started my career.

[WooShell]

Just in case you have a little time to waste, could you maybe put any old PCI VGA card in one of the slots? Since it's a regular x86 machine, I wonder whether it'd give a regular boot screen and BIOS, or whether that's all modified to their serial interface bootloader only.

[VKFVAX]

For a CISCO video.. there was a surprising lack of IBM gear...

[drgtiv]

It's a "roll-over" cable per Cisco lingo