Custom Ethernet Driver (Davicom DM9000)

Altera_Forum · ‎11-24-2009

Hi,

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere in the Forum. I had a search but couldn't find anything.

I'm trying to port some designs from a StratixII Nios development board to a custom StratixII board. Most of the hardware is common so this isn't too difficult. However the Nios kit uses the SMSC lan91c111 device but the new board uses the Davicom DM9000 which is not supported by the NicheStack TCP/IP Stack.

I'd like to use the NicheStack system as there is a large quantity of sample projects and systems provided utilising the NicheStack provided by Altera which i would like to make use of.

The NiosII Software Development Handbook, Chp11 states that:

"in the generic device model, you can write a new driver to support any target ethernet mac, and maintain the consistent hal and sockets api to access the hardware."

My question does anybody have or know of any already written drivers to allow the InterNiche stack to work with the DM9000? If not do you have any pointers or advise for writing my own driver as this is something I have no experience of.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

Altera_Forum · ‎11-24-2009

How similar is the DM9000 to the lan91c111? A starting point would be to take the existing lan91c111 driver and modify it to support the DM9000.

Jake

Altera_Forum · ‎11-25-2009

I've looked at the datasheets for the lan91c111 (http://www.smsc.com/media/downloads_public/data_sheets/91c111.pdf) and the DM9000 (http://www.meworks.net/userfile/24247/dm9000-ds-f03-042309.pdf) (http://www.meworks.net/userfile/24247/dm9000-ds-f03-042309.pdf%29), but they are >100pages and i am having difficulties working out how they relate to the Altera driver files for the lan91c111.

If anyone who has experience in modifying the Altera drivers could give me some advice as to where to start that would be great.

Thanks,

Andrew