Cisco - Firewall - ASA 5580 - Notes

Similar to Run another OS on ASA but with no IDC 16 PIN connector visible on the motherboard I tried to stick a graphics card in an Cisco ASA 5580 to see if I could get the boot screens to get to the BIOS to disable ROMMON as is supposedly possible on some smaller ASA 5500 series models.

Tested on 2024-02-24.

Monitor: Samsung SyncMater 151s with VGA.

Booted with an ASUS EN9400GT PCIe adapter in slot 7.
Result:
Videocard fan does not spin up.
Monitor displays nothing.
ASA 5580 hangs on “Booting system, please wait….”.

Booted with PowerColor Radeon X1650 Pro PCIe adapter in slot 7, with monitor on DVI to VGA adapter.
Result:
Videocard fan does spin up.
Monitor displays nothing. Tried both DVI outputs of the videocard.
ASA 5580 does boot successfully.
‘show inventory’ does not see an extra PCIe adapter.:

ciscoasa> show inventory 
Name: "Chassis", DESCR: "ASA 5580-20 Adaptive Security Appliance"
PID: ASA5580-20                , VID: V01          , SN: SERIALNUMBER

Name: "slot 3", DESCR: "ASA 5580 4 port GE Copper Interface Card"
PID: ASA5580-4GE-CU        , VID: D4577410, SN: SERIALNUMBER

Name: "slot 4", DESCR: "ASA 5580 4 port GE Fiber Interface Card"
PID: ASA5580-4GE-FI        , VID: D5618407, SN: SERIALNUMBER

Booted with PowerColor Radeon X1650 Pro PCIe adapter in slot 5, with monitor on DVI to VGA adapter.
Result:
Videocard fan does spin up.
Monitor displays nothing. Tried both DVI outputs of the videocard.
ASA 5580 does boot successfully.

Booted with PowerColor Radeon X1650 Pro PCIe adapter in slot 8, with monitor on DVI to VGA adapter.
Result:
Videocard fan does spin up.
Monitor displays nothing. Tried both DVI outputs of the videocard.
ASA 5580 does boot successfully.

Tested on 2024-03-03.

I tried booting an ASA 5580 with a Super Micro AOC-STGN-I2S dual-port 10 Gbps Intel X520-based PCIe NIC in either slot 8 or 6, and in both slots it does not work.

The ASA 5580 hangs on “Booting system, please wait….”, and won't continue booting.