[ECOS] Re: RedBoot "set MAC address" API?

[Gary Thomas]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> In gmane.os.ecos.general, you wrote:
> 
>>> I've never seen an Ethernet chip with a non-volatile MAC.
>> Many MACs have an interface for a serial EEPROM from which they fetch
>> the MAC address and other initialization data automatically on
>> reset. The manufacturer usually installs the MAC address. Admittedly
>> this is more common for PCI MAC cards that in embedded devices, but
>> I've seen it on development boards too.
> 
> That's often how it's done on things like PCI and development
> boards, but I've never seen it done that way on a "real"
> embedded product.  Maybe we've always been to cheap to spring
> for a separate config ROM for the Ethernet MAC.

The response to this is normally - there's already FLASH or EEPROM
available for other things, why add components?  That's why 'fconfig'
is used.

>> In general the MAC address is stored in the fconfig data. All
>> drivers that need to set the MAC address contain code to query
>> the flash and fetch the MAC address from there, or call a
>> platform-specific function than may do that. They usually also
>> have a fallback to a compiled-in MAC address.
> 
> Except for the drivers I've used, apparently.  Is there any
> documentation available on how fconfig data is formatted/used?

Look at any of the PowerPC drivers.

I'd recommend using the RedBoot support (macros, functions, etc).
It's pretty straight forward to use.

> 
> Better yet, is any of the documentation available in a
> searchible format (e.g a pdf file or a single html page)?
> Searching for info in documents formatted 
> one-paragraph-per-web-page is hopeless.
> 

You can always generate this yourself:
   % cd .../ecos/doc/sgml
   % ./makemakefile
   % make pdfa4
       -or-
   % make pdfletter

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
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