I'm a returning student with not a lot of real world hands on experience (wasted a lot of time with things like GNS3), especially super legacy models such as the 2514 router, which is my current problem child. I purchased a stack well over a decade ago and just pulled it out of my storage, so they do belong to me, BUT I am not a current enterprise paying partner with Cisco except as a student, so I don't think they'll help me especially since this is way way way out of support for them. Out of my old legacy stack of switches and routers, I got everything up and running except this one pain in the rear router, which has frustrated me to this point. I've spent 2 straight days not getting this series of problems fixed. Yes, I've read a lot of threads on here, but I couldn't either understand fully or the info was unique to them. I even consulted Cisco documents. So, I figured I'd just suck it up and ask for help.
**please don't assume I know what you're talking about if you don't spell it out for me and this will also help other frustrated students reading this in the future**
First problem is it came up with obvious memory errors, so I unplugged it, cracked it open and reseated the RAM - FIXED THAT!
2nd problem is it came up with a secret password I couldn't guess, so I broke in with with Ctrl+break and issued #config-register 0x2142 from enable mode. The real current problem now is that I think I bricked it while guessing how to set it back to factory defaults while frustrated and randomly throwing commands like write erase, copy run start, copy start run, erase flash, etc I can't recall everything I typed, but I used help a lot and tried everything that looked remotely close to a working solution.
Now I'm stuck in Router(boot)> --- (I think this is called the boot helper mode for this series router)
I've tried:
Router(boot)>en
Router(boot)#conf t
Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z.
Router(boot)(config)#config-register 0x2102 --- (and also 0x2101 in other attempts)
Router(boot)(config)#ex
Router(boot)#reload
System configuration has been modified. Save? [yes/no]: n
Proceed with reload? [confirm] ---just hit enter
Show version (or "sh ver" for anyone else reading along) confirms I successfully went to both 0x2102 and 0x2101, but am still stuck in "Router(boot)>" helper mode after not saving changes and reloading (as seen above). I may be wrong, but I think that tells me I probably erased the startup IOS. Am I wrong?
I think my current question is lol... I have several IOS images to put back on it, but don't know how to tftp sever it back in this mode even after all the searching I've done. How do I install an IOS from the boot helper mode?
I have TFTPD64 installed. Is there an easier free version I should use? I think I have it setup correctly, but just don't know the exact commands to issue for reimaging and from what mode to do this in.
Can anyone please help? Sorry it was so long, but I want this to be very thorough for other students to understand later.
