adding new descriptor format to the if_wm driver

[Vlad Balan <hbalan%usc.edu@localhost>]

Dear all,

As part of my hardware timestamping project I am implementing
timestamping support in the Intel Gigabit ethernet driver (if_wm - the
Wiseman driver). The chipset that I am working with is Intel 82576,
whose documentation is available at:
ftp://ftp.pku.edu.cn/open/net/Intel-NIC/doc/OpenSDM_82576-DS-2p0.pdf

The current if_wm driver uses an older descriptor format which is
referred in the newer documentation as a "legacy" format. In order to
use the timestamping capability of the card to full extent, I would
need to replace these descriptors with a newer format, whose status
bits instruct the card whether for transmitted packets the send time
should be recorded and indicate whether a received packet's arrival
time has been recorded. While doing the change itself should not be
very hard, I am a bit afraid that I might break some of the
functionality of the driver in the process.

I was wondering whether anyone with experience in testing networking
drivers could assist me in testing my changes. My code is available on
SourceForge and the timestamp-specific parts can be easily disabled in
order to test just the new descriptors. I plan to do the
implementation of the new descriptor-managing code in the following
two weeks, after which the complete testing could start.

Regards,
Vlad