XCore Exchange

Hey there,

I'm looking at building my own dev board for a project and am having trouble finding any UK disti's that stock the SMSC PHY used on the XMOS dev boards.

Do you know of any UK suppliers aside from DigiKey? Alternatively, can I use any PHY that supports the ULPI interface?

Thanks.

Digi-Key provides free shipping on orders over £50, but you will still have to pay duty and VAT. I'd be inclined to buy £50 worth and sell the ones you don't want; I'll have a few off you, and I wouldn't be surprised if some other people want them. I've done this in the past for some expensive RF components, and sold the ones I don't need to other radio amateurs and on Ebay. I ended up getting all the parts I needed for free.

Leon

Hey Leon,

that's a good idea. I've bought from DigiKey before and knew about the minimum order but hadn't considered selling them. That would work nicely.

I'll reply back here when I'm ready to put the order in. I'll get 25 to hit the first price break unless someone wants enough to take us up to 100.

If anyone wants any of these units can you reply here with how many you want and if there's anything else from DigiKey that you would like.

Shareef.

A group buy sounds like a good idea.

I'll take 5 pieces.

I'll take five, as well.

Leon

OK, moving this discussion out of support to the general thread.

http://www.xcore.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=131

Leon and Tony, I have your orders so no need to post unless there are further items you'd like.

Thanks, Shareef.

I'm posting on this thread since I didn't see an answer to the original question of whether any alternate parts with a ULPI interface could be used as a replacement to the SMSC USB3318. I see only a few other companies that make a USB Phy with a ULPI interface and I was hoping to find something a little more "main stream" before I just designed in the SMSC although that may not happen nor be feasible if there's something special about the 3318.

Hey George,

there may well be alternative parts, but the XMOS USB library is not open source and is tied in to the 3318. So unfortunately it's your only choice unless you plan on writing your own low level drivers.

Cheers, Shareef.

The pinout for the L2 is also optimized for the USB3318, good to know.

Thanks for the replies. I just figured I'd check here first. It seems a little odd to me why the USB PHY isn't built into the L1 when so many other processors have done it. Is there a specific reason why this wasn't done and why they chose to use the ULPI interface?