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Anyone know any good vhdl ethernet tutorials?

I don't know that my fpga is capable (spartan 3e 100k), but I thought I might like to try to do ethernet first. I remember finding a tutorial weeks ago but forgot to bookmark it, where the instructions had you hook up two io pins directly to an ethernet cable, and you could hardcode an IP address into the chip and ping it. Does anyone know of any like this, or even of the one I speak? (Might even have been verilog, I forget).

Also, at the risk of sounding stupid, can an fpga hook up directly to ethernet? Supposing it is clocked at the right speed, the only consideration is the voltage of utp/ethernet, right? What other sort of hardware would I need to make all that work? Is it anything I can salvage off an old nic?

Thanks in advance, John O.

Reply to
John Oyler
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Tutorial is there.

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10 Mbps, maybe, if you violate most of the ethernet spec ;) You'll most likely get a toy system, though.

If you just want to play and learn stuff, you could try putting in an Ethernet PHY. You won't be able to use anything from an old LAN board as those all use highly integrated PCI chipsets (unless very, very old). Or you could download the Ethernet MAC core at OpenCores.org and have a look.

If you just want to send a few packets for messaging, though, and not high throughput data, an ethernet enabled microcontroller is a much better bet.

I have an Ethernet + FPGA module in the works ; I have selected a complete and easy to use MAC+PHY chip from SMSC, the LAN9117.

Reply to
PFC

Thank you, that's the url I was looking for... I would have settled for another tutorial similar to it.

As for it being a toy system, that's fine. It will just be on my development board here, something to learn with. Eventually, I'd like to do a nice ethernet implementation suitable for an old 8-bit expansion bus. But that's for later.

Thanks agian, John

Reply to
John Oyler

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