this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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Would the BCM5719 open-source firmware work on regular computers? (github.com)
submitted 5 months ago by lemmylem@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Hello,

I'm interested in using the BCM5719 (specifically, the Dell BCM5719 NetXtreme 4x PCIe Network Card) with the open-source firmware replacement. Can it work with regular computers (e.g., Dell Precision T1700 MT)? I was reading through the docs and saw that it only lets you build two versions, one for the Talos II and one for the Blackbird. If not, could this possibly be reworked to work on regular computers?

Thanks!

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[–] Markaos@lemmy.one 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It's less about the computer and more about the card itself - Talos II and Blackbird both use the BCM5719 chip for their integrated NICs. Basically, you're flashing part of the motherboard with this firmware. A PCIe card built around the same chip might connect the interfaces in a different way, and firmware doesn't generally have a way of poking around to find out how everything's set up from the hardware side of things - it needs to just know this, and that's why there are separate firmware builds for different hardware.

If you flash one of these files to that card, it might just so happen to work perfectly, but it most likely won't. You would need to figure out how it's wired up and modify the firmware with that knowledge. And then you could use the modified open firmware with that specific card model on any computer that supports the proprietary firmware, because IIUC this is meant to be functionally identical.

So in short, no, you cannot currently use this open firmware on any computer other than Talos II and Blackbird, but for slightly different reason than you might think.

[–] lemmylem@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for the information!

I do have Libreboot on all my computers, my T1700 MT is currently Librebooted, that's the server I'm planning on using this card with. I wonder, since the firmware is nearly entirely open, we can possibly support it then, no?

[–] Markaos@lemmy.one 2 points 5 months ago

So I did look more into it, and apparently the open firmware is technically compatible with PCIe cards using this chip, but doesn't provide any advantages over just wiping the firmware and letting the chip default to its built-in fallback firmware, and so the maintainer doesn't see any value in explicitly supporting it.

Now the question is whether you consider the proprietary fallback firmware to be acceptable to run - this might sound weird, but for example FSF has explicitly made exceptions for devices with built-in firmware to be able to qualify for the Respects Your Freedom certification, so if your view aligns with theirs, you might consider this to be completely OK. If not, the free firmware appears to have a similar feature set, you'll just have to jump through more hoops.

Also do note that both the fallback firmware and the free firmware are missing many features of the proprietary firmware, so make sure to check it's not missing anything you need (wake on LAN, Jumbo frames and PXE boot seem like the most notable missing features to me).

More info on support for various PCIe cards