On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Wesley W. Terpstra <wes...@terpstra.ca> wrote: > On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:28 PM, Alexander Duyck > <alexander.du...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> DO NOT FOLLOW THIS GUIDE UNLESS YOU DON'T FEAR BRICKING YOUR CARD! >> >> Actually possible repercussions are far worse than bricking your card. >> You could potentially burn up the entire system if you mess with an >> EEPROM and you don't know what you are doing. > > I disagree. > > To even read the I2C EEPROM from the SFP+, which is how the card > rejects the SFP+, it must power it. If the SFP+ is electrically > broken, it will be a hazard regardless of whether or not it passes the > qualification check.
Yes and no. Plugging it in is one thing. Enabling link and passing traffic is another. Most devices consume less power when idle. Another thing I forgot to mention is that there are also thermal considerations you have to take into account as well. It is always possible that the SFP+ cages on the device may not dissipate enough heat for a given SFP+ module when the device is under heavy use. > Furthermore, any responsibly developed board includes a fuse to > prevent overcurrent with plug-in modules. I do not have the card in > front of me, but I expect such an expensive card would include this > sort of basic safety precaution. Odds are the card does have a fuse on it so it probably would just brick the card. Still, intentionally circumventing the white list in the EEPROM puts you at a greater risk than just "bricking the card" there is always the potential for more catastrophic issues such as the risk of actually starting a fire. I've seen things such as someone overclocking a graphics card and literally burning the network card in the slot next to it. Voiding a warranty by doing something like this can have a greater risk than just breaking the one thing you tampered with. It is those kind of liability issues that lead to things like this white-list that Intel implemented in their EEPROM in the first place. My concern wouldn't be so much about bricking the card as voiding the warranty for the entire system. You should probably stress that this is "at your own risk" and the risks could extend beyond just the card itself as there is always potential for damage to other components in the system. You might also want to throw a license on the code in the git repo so that you make it expressly clear you are not liable for any possible damages caused by the use of your code. Probably something like a BSD license would suffice. - Alex ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ E1000-devel mailing list E1000-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/e1000-devel To learn more about Intel® Ethernet, visit http://communities.intel.com/community/wired
