Author Topic: New system board onboard NIC, pinstrap or MII??  (Read 1903 times)

seth

  • Guru
  • ****
  • Posts: 485
  • A day w/o LinuxMCE is like a day w/o sunshine!
    • View Profile
New system board onboard NIC, pinstrap or MII??
« on: November 24, 2008, 07:22:31 pm »
 :)
I have a new board for an MD in my installation, that has settings in the BIOS for the onboard network adapter. It is a Realtek 8201BL PHY interface.

When going through the options on the board, I see that the interface has 3 options to set:

MAC LAN
   This option allows you to change the state of the onboard MAC LAN.
   The Choices: Auto (default), Disabled.
Onboard LAN Boot ROM
   This item allows you to enable or disable Onboard LAN Boot ROM.
   The Choices: Disabled (default), Enabled.
MAC Media Interface
   The Choices: Pin Strap (default).MII.

I can assume from the above, that MAC LAN should be set to - Auto
Onboard LAN Bootrom (PXE?) should be - Enabled
MAC Media Interface - should it be Pin Strap or MII?

Perhaps someone could enlighten me on the last part. I am not sure what to do, it has Pin Strap on by default, But a google of MII stands for Media Independent Interface. I would think to use this in a PXE boot WOL environment, I would want MII,  but as it is not the default choice, perhaps I am wrong.

Any insight would be helpful. Worst case, I could just try both.

Thanks.

Regards,

Seth
".....Because Once you've LinuxMCE'd....."
System stats located at my user page:

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/User:Seth