Does RT support the Broadcom 5754 Gigabit Ethernet controller

[hanzr]

Thanks, Danny.

Since my previous post and your reply I have used the 8.5.1 PC Evaluator to evaluate the system. I have reconfigured the SATA hardware to only have a single SATA disk. 

I used the format function (from the Utility menu) where after I re-evaluated the system - this time the File System was okay, but the program had a problem with the network card (as expected).

If I try to boot into the RT OS (from the HD), I get multiple errors:

Searching for hard drive boot program... not found.

Using safe mode program.

Datalight Reliance....

Copyright...

Labview Real-Time Boot Loader

(c)....

Error booting hard drive boot program.

Labview RT Single-Core Kernel found '4' CPU cores.

Consider installing NI...

MAX system identification name: Unspecified

Unable to configure the primary network device.

Rebooting in 10 seconds...

So, if I install an appropriate NIC, will the system be able to boot into the RT OS? Do the hard disk boot errors actually mean that there are problems there as well, or does it simply refer to the NIC problem? Can I use the RT OS without the network stack loaded?

Thanks for your posts.

[Texas_Diaz]

Hey there.

The "Error booting hard drive boot program" is expected, since you don't have anything installed to the hard drive yet.  If you had RT installed on the target then this error message would force us to have a different conversation.

Yes, if you installed an appropriate [supported] NIC then I would very much expect your system to run as advertised, assuming the PC Evaluator did not find anything wrong with your system with the new hardware installed.  The good thing is that the PC Evaluator finds 90% of the nasty hardware configuration problems that can happen to a system; the bad thing is that there's still about 10% of the problems that the PC Evaluator cannot find.  The good news for you is that everything at this point is as expected for someone who is in (thus far) great shape.

Without a network stack, the target would be similar to Mount Rushmore - you'll sit back, take it in, revel in your accomplishment, but when you actually realize you can't do anything useful with it you realize you're just yelling at a rock.  So no, bringing up the network stack is a requirement for RT.  

-Danny

[AnthonV]

Some time has passed since I asked about Broadcom NIC support - has there been any progress.  We cannot get these cards to work using the 'whitelisting' method.  Seems all Dell's are using the Broadcom chipsets, specifically in this new box we are using:

Broadcom® BCM5761 NetXtreme® Integrated on system board

Broadcom® BCM57780 NetLink® 10/100/1000 Integrated on system board

Any ideas will be appreciated!

[Texas_Diaz]

Nope, I'm afraid that we still do not support additional Broadcom devices.  At this point I must be honest with you that I'm extremely pessimistic that we will ever support them; unless National Instruments produces another PXI/PXIe controller with a Broadcom ethernet device, or a very large sales opportunity drives us to port the open-source Linux driver to RT (legal and technology concerns would cause it to be a very large sales opportunity to drive this possibility) then it's not going to happen with Broadcom's current support model.  On top of that, other vendors (including Intel and RealTek) have active support models in place for supporting their devices in 3rd party OS's, which makes it more likely we'll stick with vendors with those active support models.  I apologize if Dell's "let's save 3 cents on a network chipset" mentality causes them to be unsupported, but that's the hard fact of the matter.

-Danny

[AnthonV]

Thanks for your frank answer Danny.  Its a pity as we love using these Dell machines that we get at bulk corporate discount (literally 1/10 the price of a PXI system and you get more processing power too, o yes and thank goodness for the RTSI cable for sync purposes).  

Seems they are stuck on using the Broadcom chipsets so we'll have to use up a slot and stick an Intel NIC in there, so its not the end of the world.

Actually we're not sure whether cPCIexpress (PXIe), cPCIplus, cPCIserial , VPX or some other 3U backplane standard is going to outlast the others so we are sticking to desktops for now.

Cheers

[momolxg]

Hi Danny,

Thanks for posting this - I now have Dell Precision T5500 with this Ethernet chip set and was hoping that it would be supported. It seems that you need high level management to sort out this problem. At the moment am we are able to use a PCIe slot to plug in a compatible Ethernet card.

Thanks, Louis

[Texas_Diaz]

>> "It seems that you need high level management to sort out this problem."

All I can really say is that we have full support from high-level management here at NI, and our partners (e.g. DELL) have also attempted to use high-level management to help us acquire the necessary development support, but as of yet we have been unable to produce any tangible results.  If anyone out there has any pull with Broadcom or non-NDA and non-GPL expertise with this chipset, let me know!

-Danny