CJ 1, PHY 0 -- take THAT you stubborn wretch!

[cjsmith]

I am so loving this work-from-home thing. I hadn't set it up for over a year as I live only four miles from the office. I'm lazy, but I'm not THAT lazy. However, a few weeks ago I had some sort of fever thing, and custom dictated I decline to exercise my coworkers' immune systems, so I got set up. Boy do I love it.

I just now connected up for maybe a half hour - forty minutes TOPS - and I accomplished something I'd been trying to do for days. I got that @#$!ing @$$ piece of $#!^ -- ahem, I mean the excellent Ethernet physical-interface chip I work with, it's just stubborn, yeah -- to autonegotiate. If you don't do Ethernet work, feel free to ignore this, and if you do, you can go ahead and Marvell that it took this long to get the dang thing to do it. Should be pretty basic, right? Heh.

Well, it's working now.

That's a relief, because I was starting to think that when my boss returns from his trip Tuesday morning I was going to have to fall on my pocketknife to atone for the utter dishonor of having failed at this task. Phew. Glad I don't have to do that. Pocketknife's a slow death.

Comments

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I bow to your l337 networking ski11z. ;-)

[gdmusumeci.livejournal.com]

PHYs are a pain in the ass, indeed. :-(

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

autonegotiate? Yuck. Hell, almost every time we have flakiness on a server we have to hard code the speed because of how hard autonegotiation sucks. If you got it working, I bow to your 'leet skills, indeed :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Appropriate icon ;-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

And MII is truly annoying, 'cause you can't just go dump all the register settings in the debugger. Ah well -- it's working now.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Er, whatever you call that register-reading-and-writing interface, anyway.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Wow. Do they not negotiate according to standard or do they just not agree on anything? The chip we purchased apparently negotiates fine... IF you can convince it to!

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Drivers. It's always the damned Broadcom drivers that screw up my NetWare servers, and -- whoops. Sorry. Wrong company. Wrong rant. My mistake. ;)

Yes! Working from home can be highly productilicious.

And Randy and I will do our best to make it over to J&J's tomorrow afternoon.

Hugs!

Such language!

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

> you can go ahead and Marvell

Ooh, dirty word, dirty word!

Well, to me at least. Not that I'd expect you and the other escapees from Hell town to care in the least, nor could I blame you especially.

Of course, if you used one of our phys...well, I certainly don't understand them, so who knows how long it would take. I'm impressed that you can get one of the stupid things working regardless of who made it. It certainly keeps UNH busy making them do anything useful.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that rant is for Joe -- I no do Broadcom no more. :)

See you tomorrow (hopefully), then!

More bad language?

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

Hey, there, watch it with the B-word.

There should be at least three more expletives attached to it, and they should be R-rated.

Hope to see you folks tomorrow!

Re: Such language!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I tip my hat to you, sir; you have correctly guessed the manufacturer of the PHY I am using. :-) I am soooooooooooooo glad I happen to have its datasheet. Those are apparently not given out except under NDA. (All together now: "WHAT THE...")

So how bad is Hell town these days? (Insert sympathetic and commiserating facial expression here.)

Re: More bad language?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

BOOBIES BOOBIES BOOBIES BOOBIES

... oh wait. Wrong B-word.

Re: Such language!

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

Wow. You can get the data sheet. We can't get the docs from our own phy group. Since we have the bloody things built into the chips that I have to provide driver support to, including operating the phys, this makes things...interesting.

I'll save the rest of my latest adventures in Hell town for tomorrow, so you and Allan can perhaps enjoy it simultaneously.

Re: Such language!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's... special.

Re: More bad language?

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

That's a great B-word!

[elflet.livejournal.com]

You just had to learn to read the secret error message... If you want me to negotiate, send 50k in small, unmarked bits...

Congratulations on getting that to work! And isn't it funny how a little change of scenery can help one solve those brain-benders? (Somedays, I just have to pick up my laptop and go *somewhere* else to shake up my brain enough to come up with a solution.)

Re: More bad language?

[elflet.livejournal.com]

I'll use it the next time the hardware goes "tits up" :P

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I am laughing at the thought of unmarked bits. :)

Re: More bad language?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

You so need to see the user icon on this post.

Re: More bad language?

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

My first reaction is to laugh.

My second? OW!!!! That looks like it hurts!

Re: More bad language?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

No kidding! I actually dislike looking at it because it looks so painful. (I dislike looking at wildly bouncing boobies in real life, too, 'cause I get sympathy pains!)

Re: More bad language?

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

I do too. I think its similar to the sympathy pains guys get when they see another guy take one in the nuts!