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Networking/Discussion/Networking Drivers/i.mx35 FEC PHY question/List of Posts
Forum Topic - i.mx35 FEC PHY question: (4 Items)
   
Update
Dave Bott(deleted)
06/01/2009 12:31 PM
post30434
i.mx35 FEC PHY question   
Hi.

A customer is looking to use the i.mx35 in a custom design and wants to know if we already support the LAN8710 PHY. I 
think that the answer is yes, since they tell me it is the PHY used on the Freescale reference 3DS board for the onboard
 FEC - but they are making a design decision (before their 3DS board arrives) so they want to be sure that we can 
support it. The device saves them $10 and is smaller and uses less power than the alternatives...

The FEC source does not mention the PHY except generically...

Anyone able to confirm this ?

Thanks !

Dave
Andrew Boyd(deleted)
06/01/2009 1:44 PM
post30442
RE: i.mx35 FEC PHY question   
There is an IEEE standard for the PHY registers,
which is what matters from a software standpoint.

Any PHY manufactured within the last 5+ years will
conform to the standard, which means that our libdrvr
should talk to it.

About the only place that hardware guys get to express
their artistic creativity is the address of the PHY
on the PHY bus, which is an integer between the values
of 0 and 31 inclusive.  Most of the drivers either can
take a command line option for this, or will scan
for the PHY.

--
aboyd
Dave Bott(deleted)
06/01/2009 1:50 PM
post30443
Re: i.mx35 FEC PHY question   
Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the reply - I'll take that as a 'yes' then.
I wish I was as confident as you with PHYs - the 8360 ucc_ec driver is 
proving much less forgiving ofor instance - our reference board uses a 
Marvell PHY, for which we have custom code, while my customer's 
reference board (RDK instead of MDS) uses Broadcom parts for the GigE 
NICs, and something else for the 10/100s, and doesn't 'just work'...

Thanks !

Daave

Andrew Boyd wrote:
>
> There is an IEEE standard for the PHY registers,
> which is what matters from a software standpoint.
>
> Any PHY manufactured within the last 5+ years will
> conform to the standard, which means that our libdrvr
> should talk to it.
>
> About the only place that hardware guys get to express
> their artistic creativity is the address of the PHY
> on the PHY bus, which is an integer between the values
> of 0 and 31 inclusive.  Most of the drivers either can
> take a command line option for this, or will scan
> for the PHY.
>
> --
> aboyd
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Networking Drivers
> http://community.qnx.com/sf/go/post30442
>


-- 
Dave Bott (dbott@qnx.com)	Field Applications Engineer 
QNX Software Systems, Inc.	Cell:408 391-3535
San Jose CA

Join Foundry27 <http://community.qnx.com>;  - the new QNX developer forum.
Andrew Boyd(deleted)
06/01/2009 1:57 PM
post30445
RE: i.mx35 FEC PHY question   
99% of the time, you just need to get the mii_read()
and mii_write() functions working correctly - and
they can be a bit tricky, spinning with timeouts - 
but after that, as I said, the PHY address is about
all there is to worry about.

The last time we had to fix a bug in the libdrvr
(which is statically linked into the network driver,
and provides the MDI_ functions) was years ago, when
either Hugh or xtang had to bump up a field from a
byte to an unsigned for gige.

I am assuming that you are using auto-negotiation
for link speed and duplex, which is the other common
pothole for network drivers in years past.

I really wish we had never added speed annd duplex 
options to the drivers, because almost all the time 
they create more problems than they solve.

--
aboyd

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