[U-Boot] regarding u-boot ethernet support for TFTP boot in Banana pi R1 (Lamobo R1)

[Hans de Goede]

Hi,

On 12-08-15 10:26, ramki982 wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I've successfully compiled and running u-boot on the Bananapi R1 board using
> the instructions in http://linux-sunxi.org/Mainline_U-boot#Compile_U-Boot
>
> This board uses a BCM 53125 ethernet chip
>
> 4+1 ports 10/100/1000 Ethernet RJ45 (BCM 53125),
> WLAN @802.11b/g/n (RTL8192CU) with 2x external antennas connectors
>
> But when I any try to run any NETWORK related command - i'm getting a "No
> Link". I do have the ip add, gateway addr, net mask etc set as environment
> variables.
>
> sunxi# ping 192.168.10.1
> ethernet at 01c50000 Waiting for PHY auto negotiation to complete.........
> TIMEOUT !
> ethernet at 01c50000: No link.
> ping failed; host 192.168.10.1 is not alive

The problem is that the R1 uses a broadcom switch chip rather then a regular
ethernet phy, and neither u-boot nor the upstream kernel has support for this
switch chip.

So this is sortof expected behavior. There are kernel patches for adding
support for the switch chip in question and people have successfully
build upstream kernels with those patches.

It might be interesting to write a small u-boot patch adding support for
this switch chip, which simply enables all ports as normal (not part of a vlan)
ports.

Even if you only add proper kernel support, u-boot still needs to initialize
the gmac, as the kernel does not know how to setup the gmac tx / rx clk delays,
ideally someone would write a small kernel gmac clk driver patch to teach the
kernel about this.

Regards,

Hans