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TSE - Extending PHY support

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
979 Views

Hello, 

according to http://www.altera.com/literature/ug/ug_ethernet.pdf user guide, there are only 4 PHYs supported by default: 

■ National DP83848C (10/100 Mbps) 

■ National DP83865 (10/100/1000 Mbps) 

■ Marvell 88E1111 (10/100/1000 Mbps) 

■ Marvell 88E1145 (Quad PHY, 10/100/1000 Mbps) 

 

I want to use other PHYs in my design (eg. Realtek, Micrel or Marvell, but other chips that are not mentioned in the list). There is an example of low level structure, but maybe there is someone succeeded extending the available PHY support list? A working example would be perfect. Maybe someone have additional documentation?
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
227 Views

It is easy to add support for more PHYs in the driver. You just need to provide a few functions to initialize the PHY and detect the link speed. Nothing really complicated.

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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
227 Views

Hm, did You succeed in doing such thing? I hope the structure provided in the TSE UG is enough to add PHY support or I need to know something more?

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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
227 Views

I don't remember exactly how we did it but basically IIRC you just need to provide a structure describing your PHY and use a driver function to add it to the supported PHY list. You can take the code from one of the existing PHYs and modify it.

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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
227 Views

Great, thanks! Now we'll decide about the sample chip, then board design and I will get bet to the results.

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