Corrupted Cisco Router IOS

I purchased some used hardware for CCNA/CCNP purposes, and I have a router that has a corrupted Cisco IOS. I have 2 other routers that have a good file. I'm trying to figure out the best way to transfer that file w/out a USB drive, partially because I want to practice doing so w/out a USB drive, and partially because the apparent requirements for a USB stick for Cisco are <1GB and FAT32, none of which I have (I assume they can be purchased if needed).

If I don't know the IP information of the broken router (having never been into the IOS), is it possible to set up a tftp session to one of my working routers via crossover cable and pull the image over that way? The dialogue for that seems to indicate that I need to know the IP info for the broken router. Are there other options?

Update (5/23): I've attempted to load via USB Flash after finding a really old flash drive sitting in a box, and now have a different issue in that the router errors out while loading the file from the USB drive:

rommon 5 > boot usbflash0:c1841-spservicesk9-mz.124-3a.bin
program load complete, entry point: 0x8000f000, size: 0x3d180
loadprog: bad file magic number: 0x0
boot: cannot load "usbflash0:c1841-spservicesk9-mz.124-3a.bin"

Thanks

1 Answer

After a great deal of troubleshooting, I've come to the conclusion that there's a hardware issue on the router based on the fact that if the CF card of the non-working router is inserted into a working router, the image loads.