Re: Ethernet over SPI driver for ENC424J600

[John Dallaway <john at dallaway dot org dot uk>]

Hi Ilija

Ilija Stanislevik wrote:

> Dear fellows,
> 
> I use this opportunity to announce our development project. It is a
> driver for Microchip's ENC424J600 Ethernet controller.
> 
> My company's goal is to obtain a low level Ethernet driver which will
> use standard SPI support to communicate with the Ethernet chip. The
> development is underway on STM3210E-EVAL board. We will be glad if we
> succeed to make it independent from platform and SPI hardware.
> 
> Further, we plan to contribute the result of this development, as
> proposed in http://ecos.sourceware.org/contrib.html. Please advise us on
> the next step in this direction.

This is great news. Thank you for letting the eCos community know of
your plans at an early stage.

This driver could be useful for many eCos developers who need to add
ethernet to an existing hardware design. I note that Microchip offers a
daughter board which includes the (similar) ENC624J600 and should make
it easy for others to start experimenting with these parts:

http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=1406&dDocName=en543132

Are you intending to use lwIP or the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack in your
project? Regardless, I would encourage you to verify correct operation
with Simon Kallweit's port of lwIP 1.3.1:

  http://download.westlicht.ch/

lwIP is a good fit for eCos and I hope lwIP 1.3.1 will be integrated in
eCos CVS soon.

At some point, you will need to complete the FSF copyright assignment
paperwork. All contributors to your driver will need to make a copyright
assignment. I would recommend getting this sorted out early to avoid
delays when the driver is ready. Full instructions are available at:

  http://ecos.sourceware.org/assign.html

Finally, if you are able to collaborate with the wider eCos community on
this project, we can add it to the list of registered projects. Ref:

  http://ecos.sourceware.org/contrib.html#registered

John Dallaway