[U-Boot-Users] bootloader MAC

[NZG <ngustavson@emacinc.com>]

On Friday 09 June 2006 11:56 am, you wrote:
> You never bothered to check for example  "drivers/rtl8139.c"  in  the
> U-Boot sources or "drivers/net/8139*.c" in the Linux kernel tree.
>
> You never bothered to check for example  "drivers/eepro100.c"   in  the
> U-Boot sources or "drivers/net/e100.c"  in the Linux kernel tree.
Your right I didn't check the driver, but I checked the data sheets which 
states that the MAC is loaded upon any reset. If the driver does it it's 
purely redundancy

>You claim things which you obviously never checked.
> It's a common practice among ethernet controllers, such as the Realtek 8139 
> and the Intel 82559 to have the MAC address automatically load from the 
> EEPROM upon reset with no intervention from any sort of driver.
There is nothing about my statement that is not true.

>But you write:
> There isn't really anything incorrect about expecting the MAC to be
> valid upon loading the OS,It's typical of the industry.
>Maybe you should go and read a bit of driver code from some operating
>systems, before claiming to know what these do or don't do.
I stand by my statement. The core system put's it there, regardless of whether 
the OS reloads it or not. I believe we should do the same.

It is an interesting point however, I was unaware that the drivers are loading 
the MAC, thank you for pointing it out. Nevertheless, the MAC was already 
there, this loading is redundant.

NZG.