[c-nsp] Old C2950 Strangness..

[Howard Leadmon]

 I post this one out of curiosity more than anything, as we all know 2950's
are pretty much toss away items now days, I have a pile of them.   

 Anyway on to the interesting part of this, I booted a 2950 I had here via
the Console port (the switch was connected to nothing, other than a serial
console, and of course AC power.  After booting, the end of the boot phase
looks like this:


Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software 
IOS (tm) C2950 Software (C2950-C3H2S-M), Version 12.0(5.3)WC(1), MAINTENANCE
INTERIM SOFTWARE
Copyright (c) 1986-2001 by cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Mon 30-Apr-01 07:56 by devgoyal
FreeBSD 4.10 (STABLE)
Kernel 2.6.27 on an i686
login:


FreeBSD??    Kernel 2.6.27??   Which sounds like Linux to me kernel wise,
and a login prompt that I have no way at all of getting past.

I just never expected to see a FreeBSD prompt from a Cisco switch, has
anyone ever run into this, or know what the login is?   I am guessing this
is dropping to some kinda of internal Cisco level we never see as a user,
but it sure peaked my curiosity..

So has anyone ever seen this before, or have a clue they can share?    I
didn't have the heart to toss it out, without at least wasting a few minutes
trying to sort out why I am getting that console prompt.   I have even
rebooted it a few times, always with the same result..


--- 
Howard Leadmon