[U-Boot-Users] Support for softcore ethernet chips

[Robert Schwebel <r.schwebel@pengutronix.de>]

Hi, 

I have a board which uses a softcore ethernet chip, so before for
example U-Boot is able to do networking some binary firmware has to be
loaded into the device. 

What's the preferred method to do this? I didn't find other boards in
the U-Boot code but maybe missed something. 

Seen from a technical point of view it would be the best solution to
just link the firmware somewhere into the U-Boot image, but I would be
interested how this is generally seen wrt. GPL issues. I don't think
that this creates a derivative work, taken that it is just being
bit-banged into the hardware by some GPL code, which is not different
from what the Linux firmware interface does, but anyway. It has to be
located somehow, and spending another flash sector just for some 40KiB
would be uggly.  

Robert
-- 
 Dipl.-Ing. Robert Schwebel | http://www.pengutronix.de
 Pengutronix - Linux Solutions for Science and Industry
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