Dell 1955 Blade - Broadcom NIC not detected (BCM5708S)

Scott Long scottl at samsco.org
Wed Nov 1 19:56:20 UTC 2006


Conrad Burger wrote:
> On 01/11/06, David Christensen <davidch at broadcom.com> wrote:
> 
>> > >  > >> Oops, you're right.  I've been accidentally ignoring
>> > this anyways, I'll
>> > >  > >> take care of it.  Thanks!
>> > >  > >>
>> > >  > >> Scott
>> > >  > >>
>> > >  > >
>> > >  > >Thanks the kernel now recognizes the network interface.
>> > >  > >
>> > >  > >But it fails to "attach" the driver to the interface
>> > and gives the
>> > >  > >following error.
>> > >  > >"bce0 if_bce.c(531) SerDes controllers are not supported!"
>> > >  > >
>> > >  > >What now .... is there anything else I can try?
>> > >  > >
>> > >  > >Regards
>> > >  > >Conrad
>> > >  > >
>> > >  >
>> > >  > In if_bce.c  I found the following comment "/* DRC -
>> > ToDo: Add SerDes
>> > >  > support. */".
>> > >  >
>> > >  > Looks like the SerDes code for the BCE driver still
>> > needs to be developed :(
>> > >  >
>> > >  > If someone could finish the SerDes code for the driver,
>> > I will spend
>> > >  > as much time as needed to test each code change that is
>> > attempted to
>> > >  > get the SerDes stuff working :)
>> > >  >
>> > >  > If needs be I will hook a console up to the system to make it
>> > >  > accessible over the internet.
>> > >  >
>> > >
>> > > Because I don't the hardware and datasheet for the chip I can't make
>> > > any further changes for you. Sorry. But you can ask the
>> > driver author
>> > > for a plan for SERDES transceiver support. CCed to David
>> > Christensen,
>> > > the author of the driver.
>> > >
>> >
>> > I might try to take a look at this.  I wonder if the Linux driver
>> > already has support.
>> >
>> > Scott
>> >
>>
>> Yes, the Linux bnx2 driver does support SerDes.  I don't have the
>> bandwidth to tackle this feature until after the first of the year,
>> though a few other people have also considered looking into adding
>> the support.
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
> 
> How hard would it be to use the linux driver code base to add tthe
> SerDes support to the FreeBSD driver? I am not a C programmer, but I
> can copy and paste ;)
> 
> Cheers
> Conrad

FreeBSD has the MII and PHY blocks abstracted out into separate drivers,
unlike linux.  It's not clear to me how this may or may not affect
SerDes support.  However, it's rarely possible to cut-n-paste this kind
of stuff from Linux due to how completely differently it is treated.

Scott



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