Subject: Re: Annoucing the Port of FreeBSD NForce ethernet driver to NetBSD
To: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@dsg.stanford.edu>
From: Tom Spindler <dogcow@babymeat.com>
List: tech-net
Date: 04/29/2005 12:06:48
> >I have ported Quinton Dolan's FreeBSD i386 port of the NVidia NForce
> >ethernet driver to NetBSD (>= 2.99.17). 
> 
> Just out of curiosity: have you looked at the Linux `forcedeth'
> driver? I haven't, but if it really works, and nVidia is sending the
> developers diffs, then maybe the info there will enough to write a
> full-source, BSD-licence *BSD driver?

From inspection, the only routines actually used by the FreeBSD
driver from the (proprietary) nVidia object file are ADAPTER_OPEN,
ADAPTER_ReadPhy, and ADAPTER_WritePhy; it could well be that
replacement, non-proprietary versions of these could be written
from the information in forcedeth. In addition, I've sent mail to
the authors of the documentation used to produce the driver, but
haven't actually gotten any information back yet.

> Last: does the FreeBSD driver work with the gigabit Nvidia Ethernet?
> Have you tried it? Will it need yet more PHY support?

Presumably, since the PHY goo is in the proprietary .o, it does.
(I only have an nForce2, so no gigE for me.)