[etherlab-dev] ARM9 (NetX) EtherCAT-enhanced Network Driver

[Florian Pose]

Hi,

On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 03:13:46PM +0100, Thomas Elste wrote:
> ok, I've done some more testing with the following result: I wasn't
> able the get the ethernet interface up and running on my two netX
> boards without applying an additional patch from the netX-BSP to
> the vanilla kernel first. I've tried 2.6.20, 2.6.21 even 2.6.24
> with various configurations without success.
> The patch (17k) from the BSP adds some register definitions for
> the netX and inserts some code to set these registers in the
> function responsible for resetting the xC engine. This is the
> configurable hardware part in the netX, which allows it to use
> various realtime ethernet and fieldbus protocols.
> Some changes to the actual ethernet driver are done, too.

do you mean the standard Ethernet driver or the EtherCAT-enabled one,
that does not work?

> I don't know, if Hilscher or Pengutronix (they've done the actual
> netX Linux port) are still planning in submitting the patches
> from the BSP to the mainline kernel. Regarding the kernel version
> from the BSP and the age of the patches, I would guess: no.
> So what might be the best way to continue in this case?

Ok, if the (vanilla-)Ethernet driver is not working, it makes no sense
to let the EtherCAT-enabled version base on it. I would suggest to use
the patched one then, at least for the current kernel releases. When the
vanilla drivers get patched in the future, there's always the
possibility to switch to these versions in a future EtherCAT release.

I'll gladly include your EtherCAT-netX drivers in the next EtherCAT
release.  Could you please send me the patched version(s) for the
working drivers?

I'll also remove the TSC (get_cycles(), cpu_khz) uses from the master
code, to increase the portability to ARM architectures and others.

-- 
Best regards,
Florian Pose

http://etherlab.org