Is there Ethernet support for any other series then Intel 8255x, Intel 8254x or Broadcom 57xx

[ajabo]

There are so many boards suited perfectly for embedded operation and many of them use a Realtek Ethernet controller RTL8100C.

Is there a way to get CVI-RT running (and using Ethernet) on those boards?

If there is not, why not?

If there is, would it just be a matter of putting a RTL8100C.DLL in c:/ni-rt/system/Ethernet and change ethernet.ini appropriately?

I noticed that there seems to already be a support for some nvidia Ethernet that is not present on the pc-eval disk (at least the disk I have), so there would be hope.

[ninlmartijn]

Dear ajabo,

please notice the following KB which mainly mentiones LabVIEW, but as stated in the first paragraph this also counts for LabWindows CVI real time. Please notice you will need a real time deployement bundle for each PC you want to use as an RT system. The deployement license will be delivered with the correct ethernet card.

Best regards,

[ajabo]

My question mentioned embedded operation, which automatically excludes normal Desktop PC's and therefore a license bundle with a supported PCI Ethernet board really will not solve the issue.

My real-time target is a PC104 stack with a decent CPU board and some I/O boards. Trying out several PC104 CPU boards led me to some inexpensive but powerful enough candidates, that would however only fail the LabVIEW requirements because of the limited ethernet controller support.

What would actually be the problem in supplying support for other brands and types of ethernet controllers? Other operating systems offer ample support for myriads of ethernet controllers.

[Texas_Diaz]

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@ajabo wrote:

What would actually be the problem in supplying support for other brands and types of ethernet controllers? Other operating systems offer ample support for myriads of ethernet controllers.

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Every network chip we support with LabVIEW Real-Time has to be hand-built for the OS we're working on.  Understand that our version of PharLap ETS is not an OS that manufacturers throw themselves at to support - and it's NOT the OS that offers support for the controllers, it's the companies that provide drivers for those OS's.  RealTek, Broadcom, Intel, 3COM, NVIDIA, and others go out of their way to support drivers for the most popular platforms; the rest of us are left to do it ourselves.  And unfortunately no, we do not support the ever-changing-and-mostly-proprietary NDIS architecture that Windows does so "just grabbing the .DLL" isn't going to help any.

We support Intel chipsets because Intel provides us with first-class support in developing drivers for their ethernet chipsets.  They agree that we understand our OS better than they do, and we can write better drivers than they can (for our OS) that have low-jitter and high-determinism that work well for our platform - and most importantly, they SUPPORT us in doing so.  NVIDIA also provided us with great support, and so we wrote the NForce driver that supports a large population of those devices.  Not all vendors were so "supportive", so we've not made any updates to those drivers.

I've been looking at getting something going for RealTek devices, but I've been stymied in the NDA process for getting the programming guide.  I've tried several times now to get something started, but they've all fizzled out at various stages (all due to loss of communications) - it's a lot harder to get and hold a chipset vendor's attention when you're not buying any chips.  If anyone knows anyone at RealTek, send 'em my way and I'll get a RealTek driver going...

-Danny

[ajabo]

Thanks Danny, for this elaborate clarification.

I guess I may have been a bit naive in thinking that a company like RealTek would like their chips to be used as widely as possible and would therefore supply all the necessary information to facilitate that.

Indeed, checking with RealTek,  I would already have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement for just getting a datasheet; It's an imperfect world that we are living in.

All I can get without NDA's is a 10 page programming guide on the RTL8100 or a 12 page programming guide on the RTL8139, but that's what you most likely already saw and discarded.

- Aart