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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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14 years ago

TSE - Extending PHY support

Hello,

according to http://www.altera.com/literature/ug/ug_ethernet.pdf user guide, there are only 4 PHYs supported by default:

■ National DP83848C (10/100 Mbps)

■ National DP83865 (10/100/1000 Mbps)

■ Marvell 88E1111 (10/100/1000 Mbps)

■ Marvell 88E1145 (Quad PHY, 10/100/1000 Mbps)

I want to use other PHYs in my design (eg. Realtek, Micrel or Marvell, but other chips that are not mentioned in the list). There is an example of low level structure, but maybe there is someone succeeded extending the available PHY support list? A working example would be perfect. Maybe someone have additional documentation?

4 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    It is easy to add support for more PHYs in the driver. You just need to provide a few functions to initialize the PHY and detect the link speed. Nothing really complicated.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    Hm, did You succeed in doing such thing? I hope the structure provided in the TSE UG is enough to add PHY support or I need to know something more?

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    14 years ago

    I don't remember exactly how we did it but basically IIRC you just need to provide a structure describing your PHY and use a driver function to add it to the supported PHY list. You can take the code from one of the existing PHYs and modify it.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    Great, thanks! Now we'll decide about the sample chip, then board design and I will get bet to the results.