Am Fr 25.11.2005 11:10 schrieb Bernd Paysan
On Friday 25 November 2005 00:41, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
I've seven nForce4 PCs (ASUS A8N-E), and no problem with the Ethernet ports (all communicate with >100MB/s when using netcat).
Mobo specs usually mention some PHY chip in connection with the gigabit ethernet. Common is something marvell, and CICADA8201. Does this PHY thing affect the kernel device driver at all, or is it some kind of line transceiver like the historic MC1488/89 for RS232C?
The PHY chip really is just a transceiver. Ethernet uses a rather high voltage, so you can't connect a modern chip (with maximum 3.3V IO voltage) directly. I don't see any reason how the PHY chip can affect the software layer.
The driver has to program the PHY to correctly set up link speeds and auto negotation. While the Ethernet PHY software interface is in theory standardized in practice there are differences in the programming interfaces between the different PHYs. So occasionally you need driver changes for a new PHY.
Because if it doesn't affect the software, one can conclude that the gigabit ethernet on nforce4 chipset mobos works reliably with 10.0.
It normally should. -Andi