| 1 Jun 2025 |
 K900 | But that's non-standard | 12:10:35 |
 emily | oh | 12:10:40 |
| K900 | And the bpi-r4 can't do it | 12:10:44 |
| K900 | You need Realtek hardware on both ends | 12:10:50 |
| emily | that's why people are talking about getting Realtek ones with the "rollball protocol" to get at the MAC | 12:10:51 |
| emily | no there's definitely support for something like that | 12:10:59 |
| emily | it's come up in the context of 2.5G on the forum | 12:11:02 |
| emily | maybe in patches or something | 12:11:05 |
| emily | there's some I2C protocol you talk to the MAC over | 12:11:11 |
| emily | and people have gotten it to work | 12:11:20 |
| emily | for copper stuff at least | 12:11:24 |
| emily | but the Realtek BASE-T transceivers run too hot :( | 12:11:36 |
| K900 | Maybe with rollball stuff | 12:11:42 |
 magic_rb | Tf is rollball | 12:11:51 |
| emily | I have no idea what "rollball" means btw. | 12:11:53 |
| emily | or "inband". | 12:11:56 |
| emily | K900: also, here's the patch I was thinking about, for the R3 but it's the same PCS so should be relevant for R4 from what i've read: https://github.com/ericwoud/linux/commit/e44c36071f99acf1d027f25f3a3801b737a4547a. this is the thing about how the MAC can't do "inbound" with 2500BASE-X. it's not in the guy's current tree so maybe it was actually merged upstream in some form? | 12:12:06 |
| emily | there are also quirks for individual modules like https://github.com/ericwoud/linux/commit/622be57da4f9780c7031c21edebda1b93d99f992 | 12:12:22 |
| K900 | Rollball is basically a way to just bypass the entire SFP standard | 12:12:40 |
| K900 | And poke the phy directly in a vendor specific way | 12:12:48 |
| emily | why is it called that. | 12:12:55 |
| K900 | Which sometimes lets you do things | 12:12:55 |
| magic_rb | @emilazy:matrix.org i am so sorry for dragging you into this | 12:13:34 |
| magic_rb | lol | 12:13:37 |
| emily | I APPRECIATE THE APOLOGY | 12:13:46 |
| K900 | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
why is it called that. Because the company that presumably designed it is named Rollball | 12:14:02 |
| K900 | But they're in Shenzhen | 12:14:07 |
| emily | lol. | 12:14:11 |
| K900 | So it's entirely possible they didn't design it | 12:14:20 |
| emily | anyway I'd like to understand what's going on here and maybe it'd also help you with your crimes? | 12:14:31 |
