Ideal setup

Hey guys, I was looking for some casual advice.

I have aquired myself a 1600 (1603R - IOS ver. 12.0 on flash card) series Cisco router and a 1900 series switch. I also have 2 pcs and a laptop to play around with. The laptop is running Vista as is the better of the 2 desktops, the other is an XP machine.
oh, I also have a couple of old netgear routers tucked away. One of which is wireless.

We have 2 weeks off from college as easter is coming up, during which i thought i'd dig the equipment out and get used to them first hand. I will be doing the CCNA 4 final once were back, Then doing som more mocks before sitting the CCNA!.

I was wondering what kind of setups you guys would recommend for setting up some labs. I'd like to build up my confidence with the commands and configurations etc, especially as syntax is a bit of a problem with me still. We're not getting as much time as i'd like with the equipment at college as there isnt enough to go around. This way ill get a chance to feel the hardware rather than hypothesizing on paper.


All suggestions appreciated! This could be fun!

Start off by doing a password recovery on the router (you might have to anyway if it's new). That will get you using several commands, the boot rom, config register etc.
After that just connect the things together and play. Whatever you do, you'll gain useful experience just by setting it up. And once it's up you can change port modes and speeds, IP addresses, play with spanning tree etc. Plenty there for two weeks

Password recovery... nice sugestion! I'll start there.

Thanks!