[wellylug] Dummy ethernet crossover?

[Edmund A. Hintz]

On Tue, Sep 28, 2004, Ewen McNeill thus spake:

>- if you are doing what I think you're doing, then really you don't need
>  a physical carrier, you just need the driver to _think_ there is carrier
>  (since I believe unlike the snort situation, you don't actually need to
>  receive any data across that port).  In which case a software solution
>  may be more appropriate (again if you're doing what I think you're
>  doing, you don't have all the source -- but there may be enough source
>  amongst the bits that have been open sourced to allow you to short
>  circuit the "test for link is up and report" into a "report link is
>  up in the driver).

    I am doing what you think I'm doing... :-)

    Turns out it was the auto sensing routines (and the resulting
chicken/egg proposition) that were doing it in. My hack cable from
yesterday works fine when I set the drivers speed and duplex manually...
It probably can be hacked at the driver level, but that would also
probably require the end user to use some sort of script to launch it, so
I think I'll stick with a simple RJ45 with 2 itty bitty wires crimped
between 1-3 and 2-6. Essentially it means the end user just has to plug
in the wee dongle when needing this particular app, and given the other
crap they'll have to plug it it's no big deal. Could probably even
include the little dongle on a string of some sort connected to the rest
of the equipment...

    Anyway, thanks to all and sundry for your insightful comments...

Regards,

Ed Hintz
ed at hintz.org