----- Original Message -----
>Date: Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:34:16 -0700
>From: "Garrett D'Amore" <[email protected]>
>To: Steven Stallion <[email protected]>
>Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
>Subject: Re: [driver-discuss] Proposal: EOL dnet in favor of emancipated dfe
>
>
>Generally, +1.  The old dnet code is really crufty, and a PITA to work with.
>
>Actually, in retrospect (I didn't know this when I wrote the code), the 
>Macronix devices are fairly faithful clones of the Digital tulip 
>devices.  Starting with my mxfe driver might not be a bad approach.
>
>However, there are some tricky issues involved for dnet, which my mxfe 
>driver doesn't deal with:
>
>    1) ROM parsing.  Some NICs use a ROM to support alternative media.  
>That said, its probably not unreasonable to ditch support for dnet 
>devices that don't support either MII or NWay style 100Base-T/10Base-T.  
>(I.e. I think BNC and AUI support could go bye-bye.)
>
>    2) interrupt hackery.  It turns out that some multiport dnet cards 
>exist that use non-compliant interrupt routing.  This is something that 
>would probably need to be maintained, since I believe that most folks 
>still using dnet cards are doing so with multiport cards.  (There is 
>little need for the dnet driver otherwise.)
>
>All that said, I'd just assume see dnet go bye-bye altogether.  These 
>devices are *really* ancient; I don't think a genuine tulip part has 
>been sold in a *very* long time.   Apart from the multiport variants, 
>there is no good reason anyone should be still using these devices, 
>IMO.   There are cheap and readily available 10/100 and even gigabit 
>alternatives.
>
>    -- Garrett

+1

another starting point might be my tu. It supports srom format 4.0.2,
and 4 port cards. I tested it for nicdrv last summer, and it passed
test 1-9, I think. But the source code is very complex. It need to
be simplified and be modified to remove the support on non-required
devices.

BTW, which test in nicdrv dnet didn't pass?

-masa

>
>Steven Stallion wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> I have been working with Garrett D'Amore over the last several months to
>> add in GLDv3 support to the aging dnet driver. Unfortunately dnet is in
>> pretty rough shape, and a number of inherent issues (particularly with PHY
>> selection in the driver) is preventing clean results from NICDRV. Now that
>> Brussels and Garrett's mii work have been putback, the driver is even more
>> out of date.
>>
>> I spoke with Garrett briefly today, and had a thought: Rather than continue
>> to prop up dnet and build on a shaky foundation, I would like to see the
>> driver EOL'd and replaced by a clean-room implementation (the emancipation
>> driver-gate seems a good candidate until the new code can be integrated
>> into ON).
>>
>> Assuming community approval, I am stopping NICDRV testing of the patch for
>> Bug ID 6687881, although it is still available:
>> http://cr.opensolaris.org/~stallion/dnet/
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>   
>
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