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[on:]

One of the reasons i was looking forward to the Due with its SAM3X8E mcu was the integrated Ethernet MAC. Because of this EMAC the only component an ethernet shield would need to have was a simple PHY and a RJ45 jack with magnetics, alleviating the need for the relatively expensive and power hungry Wiznet chip on which the current ethernet shields are based.

Unfortunately it seems the Due designers didn't bother wiring the EMAC pins of the SAM3X8E to a pin header. In the schematic there is an ETH header that serves as a breakout for the EMAC pins, but in the board file this header is left out and the EMAC pins are terminated.

Quite a missed opportunity imo, or are the designers planning on releasing another board with this ETH header populated sometime in the future?

[Reply #1 on:]

Yeah that's a shame, for all terminated pins it would have been nice to have a header underneath the board ( so out of the way I guess ) even if it required manual soldering of a header strip ( could then be user decision above or below ).

I'm gonna be looking at Ethernet via USB, I think an Ethernet shield ( not new 32 bit wifi ) on the Due could be a significant bottleneck.

[Reply #2 on:]

I could perhaps make a variant of this board with the EMAC pins wired to a PHY and a Magjack (or to a header, with the networking components on another shield), but then someone would have to port the 32bit ethernet library to Arduino .

[Reply #3 on:]

I could perhaps make a variant of this board with the EMAC pins wired to a PHY and a Magjack (or to a header, with the networking components on another shield), but then someone would have to port the 32bit ethernet library to Arduino .

This could be a deal.

[Reply #4 on:]

the schematic shows an EMAC connector so we did bother but during routing we had to drop a few things.

This is the first board that we'll make with this processor so there will be more boards with more configurations.

m