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Re: Re: RedBoot "set MAC address" API?


 Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> writes:

> 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.


> 
> On all of the products I've ever worked on, software had to
> read the MAC from some non-volatile memory location and program
> the Ethernet chip on startup.  What strikes me as odd is that
> eCos Ethernet drivers don't seem to have a way for application
> code to get that MAC address to them.  Ethernet drivers appear
> to be expected to "just know" what MAC to write to the Ethernet
> controller during initialization.

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.


-- 
Nick Garnett                                     eCos Kernel Architect
http://www.ecoscentric.com                The eCos and RedBoot experts


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