From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <41515724.9090600@9fs.org> Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 11:42:44 +0100 From: Nigel Roles User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (X11/20040913) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] Hardware for venti/fossil/cpu server References: <24f622bf465e6bbf6326088add97540c@collyer.net> In-Reply-To: <24f622bf465e6bbf6326088add97540c@collyer.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: e6cc18ea-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 geoff@collyer.net wrote: >Thanks for the explanation, Nigel. > >I can see now why the motherboard makers want to include a CSA >version of the igbe, I just don't see why they felt the >need to break the CSA version of the igbe in the process. >I guess it's part of this crazy business of making the >ether drivers micromanage the configuration of the PHYs >and EEPROMs and other irrelevant rubbish that the hardware >ought to be taking care of internally (or at least setting >to sensible default state initially). > > > Actually on closer inspection the marvell chip is external on the Asus motherboard, and still only connected via (!) PCI. Only the Marvell PHY is used by Nvidia, and the embedded Gbe is their own. The linux driver for the Marvell chip (Yukon aka SysKonnect sk98) is 35000 lines. Sorry, that's not fair: 43000 including headers. See, I said 2000 lines for the Nvidia driver was nothing. Thus the Asus board is an example of how not to connect your Gbe. I'm not about to try it, but I suspect getting Plan 9 to work on the nForce 3 chipsets would not be too bad.