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   ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 15:38:46 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

   sometimes, when i'm feeling sad, i lie down with a screen of some sort and read a new specification or a datasheet for a device i think is neat or cursed

   this is how i know so much about technology

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 15:39:39 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     i have a really profitable coping mechanism

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 15:51:02 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     the nice thing about like specifications or datasheets or something is that they're usually very engaging, sometimes quite cursed, and only hurt me consensually if at all. this is why i like them so much

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 15:52:07 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     today's morning sadness reading is this thing: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/EV06P90A

     it's 10 Mbit Ethernet! not from the 90s, from the 2020s!! very cool i think

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 15:56:33 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     @jpm yep i have a pair of phys

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     Joel Michael (jpm@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 15:56:34 JST Joel Michael

     in reply to

     @whitequark Oh is that the new 2-wire industrial ethernet stuff?

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 16:25:06 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     intel ass naming scheme

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 16:39:43 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Joel Michael
     • F4GRX Sébastien

     @f4grx @jpm it's in the spec even

   • Embed this notice
     F4GRX Sébastien (f4grx@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 16:39:45 JST F4GRX Sébastien

     in reply to

     • Joel Michael

     @whitequark @jpm it's cool and doable with simple circuits. I should try! The funniest should be power over single pair ethernet. I see DC blocking caps so this should be possible.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 16:47:02 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     Failure to heed this warning

   • Embed this notice
     slaeshjag (slaeshjag@bitbang.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 16:52:23 JST slaeshjag

     in reply to

     @whitequark I'm sure there's already an errata somewhere with a couple hundred writes into undocumented registers in order to unlock basic functionality. That's usually how it goes with microchip's networking products in my experience

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 16:52:23 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @slaeshjag h-haha, encouraging...

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 17:05:40 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     this chip has a pin called "GPIO0" which cannot be arbitrarily set or read via its registers

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     🇺🇦 haxadecimal (brouhaha@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 17:08:42 JST 🇺🇦 haxadecimal

     in reply to

     @whitequark The GPIO0 pin has no value.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 19:24:05 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Brian Swetland

     @swetland I wanted this since 2014!

   • Embed this notice
     Brian Swetland (swetland@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 19:24:07 JST Brian Swetland

     in reply to

     @whitequark I've been meaning to check this out now that the various single-pair ethernet PHYs are in production. Especially curious how complex/expensive the PoE options are because combining single-pair PHYs with little MCUs sounds like a lot of fun especially if you can deliver power too...

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 19:24:17 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Joel Michael

     @jpm nope!

   • Embed this notice
     Joel Michael (jpm@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 19:24:18 JST Joel Michael

     in reply to

     @whitequark let me guess, it drives a LED doesn’t it?

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 19:39:54 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • jaseg

     @jaseg oh yeah! some soft realtime too, it seems to be geared for AVB?

   • Embed this notice
     jaseg (jaseg@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 19:39:56 JST jaseg

     in reply to

     @whitequark I think this stuff could be a great alternative to CAN and the like in non-realtime applications

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:33:17 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • jaseg

     @jaseg it is literally just a normal ethernet phy. they say nothing about the upper layers except there's special support for gPTP that makes sure the timings are right

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     jaseg (jaseg@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:33:18 JST jaseg

     in reply to

     @whitequark Since you just read up on it, do you happen to know what the upper protocol layers in this stuff are projected to be? I was kind of wondering since IPv6+TCP or whatever is cheap to do with today’s chonky MCUs, but it adds a bunch of bandwidth overhead if all you’re sending is short packets.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:33:35 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • jaseg

     @jaseg i think smoltcp might have 6lowpan as a PR somewhere?

   • Embed this notice
     jaseg (jaseg@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:33:37 JST jaseg

     in reply to

     @whitequark something like 6LowPAN might be neat, but I don’t think anyone ported that yet?

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     jaseg (jaseg@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:33:38 JST jaseg

     in reply to

     @whitequark Yeah, I see industry inertia as more of a limiting factor in these applications. Technically it should be fine with proper bandwidth planning.

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:40:29 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Martin Fournier

     @Laserboy only 50%?

     (psst i could reverse engineer any such DLL)

   • Embed this notice
     Martin Fournier (laserboy@piaille.fr)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:40:30 JST Martin Fournier

     in reply to

     @whitequark If you buy a 200k€/$/£ laser today there’s 50% chance it will communicate to your PC with string commands on serial ports, or it will be on USB 2 and have the most cursed DLL in existence and no documentation.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:52:17 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Martin Fournier

     @Laserboy yep sure! i will give it an overview to get a rough estimate of effort, then (unless it's somehow interesting to me personally or very easy) i can quote you for a complete RE effort

   • Embed this notice
     Martin Fournier (laserboy@piaille.fr)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:52:18 JST Martin Fournier

     in reply to

     @whitequark I really meant 50% serial or 50% cursed DLL, basically either. As far as the DLL goes I am forced to work in 32b because it only exists in that version. Sirah laser controls. If you wish I am happy to get that to you.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:58:23 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Martin Fournier

     @Laserboy oh i do enjoy that! i just can't afford to do a complete end-to-end RE effort for free, and that's what i opened with

   • Embed this notice
     Martin Fournier (laserboy@piaille.fr)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 20:58:25 JST Martin Fournier

     in reply to

     @whitequark Oh I apologize, I have no need of such RE, I though you might just enjoy looking at it for fun. And it’s not like I can get spending for that in this funding environment 🥲

   • Embed this notice
     Fabian Giesen (rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 02-Jun-2025 03:54:36 JST Fabian Giesen

     in reply to

     @whitequark they're all like that

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Jun-2025 03:54:44 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • Fabian Giesen

     @rygorous speechless

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Jun-2025 14:50:59 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @slaeshjag the PHY sure does behave in a ... weird manner

   • Embed this notice
     slaeshjag (slaeshjag@bitbang.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Jun-2025 14:51:00 JST slaeshjag

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @whitequark @slaeshjag keep us updated. A friend designed a few boards around it for his sailing boat, I think that project is still in bring-up hell :v

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Jun-2025 15:18:10 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @slaeshjag I got it to receive like... most of the time. Like maybe 9 out of 10 times. 1 out of 10 times it does something batshit

   • Embed this notice
     slaeshjag (slaeshjag@bitbang.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Jun-2025 15:18:11 JST slaeshjag

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @whitequark @slaeshjag Yeah, that's what I've heard too. Friend of mine got it to transmit but not to receive, and now he wants to re-make the boards because he doesn't know if it's a microchip thing or if the boards weren't soldered up correctly :D

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Jun-2025 15:18:25 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @slaeshjag and by "receive" I mean I have these issues with near end loopback alone

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 15-Jun-2025 07:06:32 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @slaeshjag i think the near end loopback mode in this PHY is fucked

   • Embed this notice
     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 15-Jun-2025 20:32:03 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @slaeshjag I *think* I found a bug with their RMII implementation but I'm still trying to make sense of it all

   • Embed this notice
     slaeshjag (slaeshjag@bitbang.social)'s status on Sunday, 15-Jun-2025 20:32:04 JST slaeshjag

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @whitequark @slaeshjag I'm starting to think those PHYs are just special in all the wrong ways, and that there's nothing wrong with the boards my friend put together. At one point, the devices and datasheets suddently disappeared of Microchip's website for like 5 months while mouser kept selling the chips :v

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 15-Jun-2025 23:59:28 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @slaeshjag ok i finally got the PHYs working, i had a bug in the RMII TX code as well as RX

     took a bit but:

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 05:58:25 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @slaeshjag zero writes via MDIO

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     slaeshjag (slaeshjag@bitbang.social)'s status on Monday, 16-Jun-2025 05:58:26 JST slaeshjag

     in reply to

     • slaeshjag

     @whitequark @slaeshjag did you have to do anything weird with registers or so, or was it all just according to the docs?