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New BCM5751 Driver


BigPimpin
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It has a few problems but it works on my BCM5751. It should work on all the Tigon3 chips that the if_bge driver (FreeBSD) supports. That would be most chips in the BCM57XX and BCM590X families. I was only able to test it with my particular ethernet adapter. If you're interested in trying it out look at my user profile for the link.

 

This driver project is no longer being developed. It should work for the BCM5751, but that's it.

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Well after reading your release notes and examining the Info.plist I've discovered that this is the same card in my Precision 690. I will try it at work tomorrow and let you know the results. I don't suppose you would be willing to share the source you've made/adapted so far? I'd love to contribute to this project. I have Xcode and a someone limited programming background, but I'm always willing to learn and offer my insights.

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I've tried the driver. I've got the message that the new networking device has been discovered. Unfortunately it does not determine that the cable is connected (read cannot negotiate speed). I tried to set the speed manually but no luck.

ifconfig shows a valid MAC address for the new device.

I am using the vanilla kernel 10.5.2 on Dell M90. The network card is 14e4 1600

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It has a few problems but it works on my BCM5751. It should work on all the Tigon3 chips that the if_bge driver (FreeBSD) supports. That would be most chips in the BCM57XX and BCM590X families. I was only able to test it with my particular ethernet adapter. If you're interested in trying it out look at my user profile for the link.

 

i tried on my bcm590x,but it dosen't work.

is there any driver available for my bcm590x?

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Hi BigPimpin, not sure if I am missing something but I don't see any links (to any drivers) in any of the 8 posts above. Are you developing a new driver? Does it support the Broadcom 5787? If yes, I can also test it. Thanks.

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I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, after this:

 

sudo kextload -t BCM57XX.kext

 

I see:

 

File owner/permissions are incorrect (must be root:wheel, nonwritable by group:other)

 

I'm sure I've forgotten to do something easy, any help?

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rjohnst2, did you do the "chown -R root:wheel BCM57XX.kext" step?

 

omegax, see my profile for a link. The 5787 should be included but right now people are reporting problems. AFAIK the 5751 (my own chip) is the only one it works with, but I hope that will change soon.

 

I'd like to keep the main discussion off of this site because lately I can't get most pages to load without re-trying 3 or 4 times. A few times last week I couldn't even connect to the forums here.

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At first, BigPimpin, thank you for your progress in developing BCM57XX.

 

I tested my BCM5787 NIC last night, but no luck.

 

When I checked with the MAC ADDRESS, there is nothing even 00:00:00:00:00:00.

 

But buddy, you give us a hope, thank you all the same.

 

One day, you will do it.

 

:D

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i have: [14e4:1693] (rev 02) installed with how-to.

i dont have mac anymore==> the card isnt detected anymore.

pls upload our com.apple.IONetwork.kext and IONetworkFamily.kext.

all is fine loaded (kextstat shows allright) but nothing in ifconfig or system profile (says cable is unplugged but it isnt)

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  • 2 weeks later...

BigPimpin, according to the FreeBSD website their version of the bge driver will NOT work with BCM590X network adapters. However, it appears that OpenBSD's version does work. Would you be able to adapt your driver over to the OpenBSD version? Also, are you going to release the source code for this driver? I would be willing to help with the driver and I could provide a BCM590X network adapter to test on.

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I just read the FreeBSD bge page and it doesn't mention the bcm590x at all. On the other hand, this page shows a list with the BCM5901 and the BCM5903M at the end. That list supposedly contains the vendors and chipsets supported by the driver. One way to tell for sure is for someone to load up FreeBSD 7 onto a machine and see if they work :hysterical:

 

My project is at a standstill. The BCM5751 I have on my mobo works and the driver will probably only ever work for the BCM5751 chip. I thought there would be enough commonality to get some other chips working, too, but I spent days debugging the code in order to make my chip work and there is a lot of code that I never debugged at all because I've only got that one particular chip. If the code is never executed there's no way to test it. The 5752 and 5787 are reported to not work with the driver and I thought those 2 had the best shot at working almost immediately.

 

I haven't even looked at the code in a while. In fact, I have only booted up OSX twice in the last month. I'm spending my spare time working on a Linux driver for an unusual wireless chip that my router uses. First I have to get it working on the Linux 2.4 kernel and then I have to migrate the code to 2.6 and then I have to get everything else on the router moved up to 2.6. Besides that I have 2 firewire projects that I will return to OSX for.

 

All this leaves no time for the BCM57XX OSX driver. I have decided not to release the source code at this time.

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I sort of doubt it. At least not right now.

 

There are several different ways to read/write the chip registers depending on the model. I wrote a "test driver" that uses the same read/write techniques as the main driver. Its purpose was just to read the really basic info off the chip, like the model number sub-code and the PHY model. Almost immediately I heard from people that it didn't work either. It loaded OK but the "probe" function, which is called by OSX right after any driver is loaded, was failing because it couldn't do even the most basic I/O operations on anything besides the 5751.

 

I'll probably take another look at it in another couple of months to see what I'm missing. I based it on FreeBSD 4 because that's what the BSD part of OSX was based on. FreeBSD is all the way up to version 7 now and odds are there are some substantial differences in the bge driver code. I just don't have the time right now to do it.

 

If you've got a BCM5751 you're in luck. I realize that doesn't help anyone with one of the newer chips. My 5751 came on the mobo of my 4-year-old Dell Dimension. It's probably not used much any more on newer PCs.

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Thanks for spending the time to create this driver!

 

The BCM 5751 is the onboard lan chip for the Dell Dimension 8400, right? I can't find a link (or any kind) to download your driver in your profile - can you PM me, if the link can't be posted publicly?

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Hey BigPimpin, sorry I did not see your reply. For some odd reason my Yahoo spam filter flags some InsanelyMac Topic Reply messages as spam and doesn't flag others. Anyway, thanks for the information. It appears that the FreeBSD driver now does officially support the BCM5906 chipset (mine). However, this is the current CVS version of the driver so obviously is it a much later version than the one you ported.

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Hey BigPimpin, sorry I did not see your reply. For some odd reason my Yahoo spam filter flags some InsanelyMac Topic Reply messages as spam and doesn't flag others. Anyway, thanks for the information. It appears that the FreeBSD driver now does officially support the BCM5906 chipset (mine). However, this is the current CVS version of the driver so obviously is it a much later version than the one you ported.

 

Wow that is really good news, maybe there is some hope for me. But my Vostro sucks, the GFX card, I swear there is something wrong with it.

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he used a 57xx driver for 57xx chipset not for 590's T.T

 

xbox, he is using the FreeBSD bge driver. This is the driver the BSD folks use for Broadcom chipset support. Like he said earlier, however, he used the bge driver from version 4 of FreeBSD and FreeBSD is now on version 7. Back in version 4, the 590x series chips probably didn't even exist. Support for the 5906 chips was only recently added to the version 7 driver. If BigPimpin is not willing to share his source code then it will take a driver written from scratch to add OS X support. Since it appears BigPimpin is not going to share with me, I will be spending the weekend reading up on IOKit examples and looking at other existing drivers before starting a fresh port. If I do port it, I will probably port the entire bge driver so that every chipset that driver supports will also be supported in OS X.

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  • 1 month later...

I don't see this driver or a link to this driver anywhere, profile included. I have a Dell GX620 that is working with the BCM5751 card in it but I have to either run a script to assign a MAC address on startup or since upgrading to 10.5.5 I have to manually run said script with SystemStarter to get it to work. I have tired multiple kext files but cannot get the card working 100% with MAC address and DHCP on boot. Any ideas or at least a link to your driver so I can try it?

 

Thanks,

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