RAM/FLASH
The 2500 series uses 72pin FPM simms with parity, and can take a maximum of 16MB. There is only one 72pin simm socket.
There are 2 Flash Memory sockets available, with the maximum flash memory supported being 16MB. Standard flash memory was 8MB on most routers and 4mb on 'Mission Specific' models. A boot ROM upgrade may be needed to use 16MB of flash.
Some 2500 models (e.g. 2511) had a PCMCIA scocket installed on the board. It was intended that Cisco would send IOS updates on PCMCIA, which would then update the router. Support for this was very limited, and the device was read only.
The 2500 ran the software directly from flash memory. On the 2500 software upgrade required booting to a BOOTROM OS with reduced functionality to have write access on the flash file system. The BOOTROM OS did not support Tokenring interfaces, making software upgrade more complex. On more recent models, the software is a compressed file on flash that first need to be extracted in RAM. As a result, the flash file systems on those routers was read/write during operation and software installation could be done during runtime.
Read more about this topic: Cisco 2500 Series
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