The design principle for U-Boot is to make it as easily to port to new hardware as possible, which means: use a polling driver.

Noted - and will do. The easy answer is usually the right answer.

Normally the ethernet interface gets initialized only once

After recompiling with SMC_DEBUG turned to 2, _every_ time a ping is done:

BOOT> ping 10.64.204.131 SMC91111:smc_close LAN91C111:smc_shutdown SMC91111:smc_open SMC91111:smc_reset SMC91111:smc_enable SMC91111:phy caps=7809 SMC91111:phy advertised caps=1e1 Using MAC Address 02:FFFFFF80:FFFFFFAD:20:31:FFFFFFB8 SMC91111: memory allocation, try 1 succeeded ... Polling... SMC91111: Sent packet of length 60 MMU ready RCV: STATUS c6 LENGTH 42 SMC91111: memory allocation, try 1 succeeded ... Polling... SMC91111: Sent packet of length 60 MMU ready RCV: STATUS c6 LENGTH 42 SMC91111:smc_close LAN91C111:smc_shutdown host 10.64.204.131 is alive

Any thoughts on why it would start with a close & shutdown (and end the same way)?

A patch to update the README is welcome ;-)

After figuring things out, I will see what I can add.

Make it [timers] as precise as possible without breaking a leg.

Cool - spend enough time to make things in the right order of magnitude, but no more.

see doc/README.autoboot when the port is autobauding it will be difficult not to break existing

code.

Yeah, I see the added complexity. Maybe later - maybe never...

Thanks -Robin