[Prism54-devel] Net2280 usage

[Jean-Baptiste Note]

Hello Feyd, Sébastien, dear list,

I've not-so-recently stumbled accross this :

http://www.plxtech.com/products/NET2000/NET2280/NET2280EVB-SW/default.asp

I've thought about the usage of such a device. I have contacted sales
representatives of NetChip in France, who will be able to answer my
question ... some time in the future, so i'll ask here :

I'd like to program the net2280 to be a PCI snooper that is to say,
there'd be a "observed" system where i plug the pci card along with a
"to be reverse-engeneered card", an "observer" system where i plug the
USB2 cable. The "to be reverse-engeneered card" starts to talk to the
card, and the net2280 card would "see" what happens on the bus, and send
the PCI transactions over to the observer system. Kind of what we do
with USBSnoop, save that this does not seem possible purely in software
mode with the pci bus.

The question now is : do you have enough knowledge of the net2280 to
determine if its PCI engine is programmable enough that we can put it in
"promiscuous mode", and capture *all* transactions on the bus, and not
only the ones adresses to the peripheral (this is "electrically
possible", i've seen it done with a PCI implementation on an FPGA chip).

This would help, for instance, to re-build the madwifi "hal"
into source, or help produce more drivers for pci cards for which
windows drivers are available.

JB

-- 
Jean-Baptiste Note
+33 (0)6 83 03 42 38
jean-baptiste.note at wanadoo.fr