Re: Porting the ibm_newemac driver to use phylib (and other PHY/MAC questions)

[Josh Boyer <jwboyer@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Kyle Moffett <kyle@moffetthome.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm currently fiddling with a custom embedded prototype board using
> the ibm_newemac driver with some currently-unsupported PHYs.  Those
> PHYs *are* supported by phylib, but the emac driver seems to have its
> own PHY layer cribbed from the sungem driver.  I'm curious if there's
> some particular reason it hasn't been ported (aside from "nobody has
> bothered yet").

IIRC, Ben had some issues with how phylib and the EMAC would need to
interact.  Not sure if he has those written down somewhere or not.
(CC'd).

> I've temporarily hacked a PHY driver together for the moment, but it
> would be much easier for us to maintain and update our board if the
> PHY drivers were integrated.  As a result I'm also interested in how
> complicated it might be to port the driver (and possibly sungem as
> well) over to phylib, if that is indeed feasible.  Also, if I end up
> going that route, are there others available with other hardware
> variants who would be willing to test my patches on their boards?

I have a large variety of boards that I can test with since the entire
4xx line relies on this driver for on-board network.

josh