Hi Jens,

The information regarding etc. MAC address is normally handled by the
bootloader which also seams to be the case here. When the bootloader
handles over the control to the kernel is can also hand over a pointer
to a board information structure which contains information like MAC
and other borad specific information. As var as i remeber it is not
required and can often be disabled in the bootloader at compile time.

I would take a look at the bootloader to se if the information is
passed on. This is handled differently for every processor so I would
also take a look at the processor specific start code in the kernel
arch/[processor type]/kernel/*

Mogens
Jens Nixdorf skrev:

> Hi all,
>
> i'm running in trouble with the above mentioned Ethernet-Chip at an embedded
> Toshiba-MIPS-Board (Phoenix). This Board is running PMON as Bootloader, and
> with PMON the ethernet-chip is working fine. So we can download tons of
> software through this NIC and it is running smoothly.
>
> But in Linux it doesnt. We try to run MontaVista 4.01 (kernel 2.6.x) on it,
> the NIC will be recognized, but it doesnt work. It even doesnt give a
> proper error message, all we get is a "eth0 isnt configured". If i do some
> config by hand with ifconfig, it just doesnt work. The only noticable thing
> is that ifconfig doesnt show the MAC of the NIC, omly 00:00:00:00:00:00. Is
> there anybody with similar experience with these NIC and maybe a solution
> or just a hint?
>
> Thanks, Jens
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Winther schrubte am Dienstag, 25. Juli 2006 10:31:

> The information regarding etc. MAC address is normally handled by the
> bootloader which also seams to be the case here. When the bootloader
> handles over the control to the kernel is can also hand over a pointer
> to a board information structure which contains information like MAC
> and other borad specific information. As var as i remeber it is not
> required and can often be disabled in the bootloader at compile time.
>
> I would take a look at the bootloader to se if the information is
> passed on. This is handled differently for every processor so I would
> also take a look at the processor specific start code in the kernel
> arch/[processor type]/kernel/*

Thank you for your answer and sorry for the delay with my response. In my
case the problem was that the NIC has to work in 8bit-mode (this is a
limitation of the board we use). But in 8bit-mode the default driver of
this NIC (cs8900) is working in a very limited way. As an example it can
only work in polling mode.

Fortunately there is an alternative driver (cyrrus), which is working much
better after some reworking on it, which has be done by some guys of
pengutronix (thanks!).

regards, Jens


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