Porting the ibm_newemac driver to use phylib (and other PHY/MAC questions)

[Kyle Moffett]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Kyle Moffett <kyle at moffetthome.net> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm currently fiddling with a custom embedded prototype board using
>> the ibm_newemac driver with some currently-unsupported PHYs.  Those
>> PHYs *are* supported by phylib, but the emac driver seems to have its
>> own PHY layer cribbed from the sungem driver.  I'm curious if there's
>> some particular reason it hasn't been ported (aside from "nobody has
>> bothered yet").
>
> IIRC, Ben had some issues with how phylib and the EMAC would need to
> interact.  Not sure if he has those written down somewhere or not.
> (CC'd).

Hmm, yeah, I'd be interested to see those.  There's enough similar
between phylib and the EMAC and sungem drivers that I'm considering a
series of somewhat-mechanical patches to make EMAC and sungem use the
"struct phy_device" and "struct mii_bus" from phylib, possibly
abstracting out some helper functions along the way.

>> Also, if I end up
>> going that route, are there others available with other hardware
>> variants who would be willing to test my patches on their boards?
>
> I have a large variety of boards that I can test with since the entire
> 4xx line relies on this driver for on-board network.

Wonderful!  If/when I hack together a patch series I'll make sure to
put you on the CC list.  Thanks!

Cheers,
Kyle Moffett