From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 29 00:41:34 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BEDF6106564A for ; Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:41:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nlandys@gmail.com) Received: from mail-gw0-f54.google.com (mail-gw0-f54.google.com [74.125.83.54]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7EBFF8FC08 for ; Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:41:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: by gwb15 with SMTP id 15so1620595gwb.13 for ; Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:41:33 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type; bh=0A1vcMTcyGifHRkyd7QS8vVAd3MMqtaVzEJIZu3ymwk=; b=WQ5bhJeiFizQBqKlyECAZgFN1l7XqNC9RDnthawkqpHC1LJp997zD8vaY21npWUL5M 6Os+CEDTquR11srU5VAXzPgTgw63AgTAGoGaGzbW0mKbzbzAaDCr6LvuxEpSvnjh8NVE UfgrKnrJkLRcHWS/ct2mzRUv0wNTjzUzys0tM= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; b=Fq4Std73G5+M7GNDqMarfICmCf76ggUNBFNqirPlkKeG7n+3eoccOuc+HWYGRqjDw6 KW+dnpOOZ1MMcUvhyx8ocHxJ0/j6E1g3IdE11rths2rKipnAUldvlKgirAKUCEZJulGn 6uhUQ7+4F5/ElUHK14GtQ10p2XwGb8YnyL17M= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.236.183.162 with SMTP id q22mr2486852yhm.87.1301359293686; Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:41:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.146.168.8 with HTTP; Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:41:33 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:41:33 -0700 Message-ID: From: Nerius Landys To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Subject: What's so special about 0xffff EEPROM checksum X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:41:34 -0000 I'm looking at driver code in the FreeBSD kernel, and pretty much everywhere I look I see a check for EEPROM checksum. It's always 0xffff. What is so special about this value 0xffff? Is this value agreed upon by hardware manufacturers? So basically they have one end slot for data where they put in the last bytes in order to ensure that the checksum is always 0xffff?