I have been struggling to bring up the ethernet connection on a 9260-EK clone in Uboot. The board is a direct copy of the 9260EK and as such utilizes the same Davicom DM9161 PHY. It appears that Uboot can find the PHY, whether it is on address 0 or not I am unsure of. The PHY will make a connection to my PC and communication seems to occur across the TX/RX lines when looking with a scope, however the Link/Acct light is constantly flashing very erratically. I do get a "MAC: error during RMII initialization" during boot. I cannot tftp nor ping the PC that it is supposedly connected to. I have checked all pins of the PHY and matched them to what is seen on my EK board and all is fine except the TX/RX lines. If no cable is present the signal on the TX+/TX- and RX+/RX- lines is not a steady 2.4V as seen on the EK board. It seems to be jumping around on my board, pulsing if you will at the same rate as the Link light is flickering. The reset line is not asserted, and the pwrdwn line is pulled low.

Could it be possible the chip is continually trying to reconnect? I am not super familiar with ethernet and would greatly appreciate some assistance in diagnosing my issue.

Thnis may sound dumb, but did you also copy the BOM? There are parts in the Ethernet circuit for an MII build option. Maybe you have some of these parts installed, when they should not be.

I did copy the BOM, its a direct copy of the entire ethernet circuit so I must have some extra parts in there. I did notice on the DM9161 datasheet that there are several parts not connected to be in RMII mode, I disconnected these lines but still have same issue. Uboot seems to recognizes that there is a link present, as does my host machine, but still shows the RMII initialization error.

Does you board have the DM9161AEP or DM9161EP
- I have the 'EP' version, and cant get it to work..