Abstract

The aim of this project is to completely rewrite two legacy etherboot drivers present in iPXE: for VIA Rhine (VT6105M) and VIA Velocity (VT6122/VT6130) chipsets.

Deliverables

Deliverable Week Current status
Investigate iPXE drivers API and PCI API 1 done
Write skeleton for new VIA Rhine driver: probe and attach card, read EEPROM, communicate with MII PHY 2, 3 done
Write send and receive (polling) support for VIA Rhine 4, 5 done
Do functional and performance tests on driver 6 done
Write skeleton for VIA Velocity driver: probe, attach, read EEPROM and PHY 7, 8 done
Write send and receive support for VIA Velocity 9, 10 in progress
Do functional and performance tests on driver 11 in progress
Review the code and do final cleanup 12 not done
Commit code and write documentation 13 not done

Daily progress

  1. 2012.05.20: Write skeleton for VIA Rhine driver based on skeleton.[ch]. Chip reset, MII read/write and reading MAC address from chip is working.
  2. 2012.05.22: Code style cleanup, introduce rhine_reload_eeprom() function to reload EEPROM contents. Working on link status notifications.
  3. 2012.05.24: First packets are successfully sent using new Rhine driver!
  4. 2012.05.30: RX and TX now working - first successfull boot using new Rhine driver
  5. 2012.06.10: Code cleanup, working on link status changes notifications
  6. 2012.06.20: Rhine driver almost finished. Begun working on Velocity driver
  7. 2012.06.29: Skeleton for VIA Velocity driver done
  8. 2012.07.07: VIA Velocity initialization, reset, EEPROM read, MII access and link status reporting works.
  9. 2012.07.10: Working on to get first packet transmitted and received on VIA Velocity
  10. 2012.07.25: TX and RX working with some minor issues
  11. 2012.08.13: Interrupt support (for UNDI) is working for both chips.

Screenshots

  1. The very first sent DHCP packet - Rhine: http://i.imgur.com/D2RTn.png
  2. The very first sent DHCP packet - Velocity: http://i.imgur.com/PC9z7.png

Test plan

  1. Functional tests: transferring images, link state and speed changes
  2. Performance tests: transfer speed

Useful links

  1. Code repository: https://git.ipxe.org/people/budrys/ipxe.git
  2. VIA VT6105M datasheet: http://tinyurl.com/7gluqd5
  3. VIA VT6122 datasheet: http://people.freebsd.org/~wpaul/VIA/DS6122R160.pdf