BCM5719

Overview

The BCM5719 is the NIC integrated into the Talos™ II and Blackbird™ systems. It is based on the wildly popular NetXtreme architecture, and there have been efforts to document the internal operation of devices based on that architecture.

The BCM5719 also connects to the BMC via RGMII NC-SI, providing network connectivity to the BMC.

Firmware

All Raptor systems shipped after May 10, 2021 use the open-source Ortega firmware for the BCM5719 device.

Older devices that shipped with the proprietary firmware can be updated to the open source firmware by following the instructions on github or by using the following command:

[user@hostname ~]$ sudo fwupdmgr switch-branch

Once on the open source firmware branch, fwupd will will provide updates using the following command:

[user@hostname ~]$ sudo fwupdmgr update

Details

On board EEPROM layout (note: may change as understanding of EEPROM file system evolves)

Offset	Length	Data	CRC Protected
0x7e	6	MAC Address (port 0)	NO
0xce	6	MAC Address (port 1)	NO
0x20a	6	MAC Address (port 2)	NO
0x25a	6	MAC Address (port 3)	NO

Resources

• Official Ortega firmware shipped on Raptor systems
• Register manual
• Proprietary Broadcom firmware image for recovery of bricked Talos™ II on-board NICs. This image is considered deprecated by Raptor, and Raptor strongly recommends the use of the open-source Ortega firmware instead of the proprietary Broadcom firmware. Note that the two MAC addresses inside this image must be changed to match the MAC addresses on your particular Talos™ II system; failure to do so could potentially cause serious network issues, including harm to other computers and/or users on any network(s) attached to the Broadcom network ports.
• Reverse engineering work by Guillaume Delugré
  • Slides from initial presentation by Guillaume Delugré at HACK.LU 2010
  • Slides from second presentation of Guillaume Delugré's talk at HITB Malaysia 2011
  • Slides and Audio from followup presentation by Guillaume Delugré for Recon 2011 (Video in file is broken)]
• Project Ortega — firmware reverse engineering project
• meklort/bcm5719-fw - firmware reimplementation (BSD licensed)