LAN/NIC problem

[MarkHaysHarris777]

it occurs to me that using a program call to set a hardware register is a software solution. that , to me, is one of the basic reasons/purposes of software, the manipulation of the present hardware to achieve a goal.  can you explain to me why it is not?  thanks.

I suspect it was just not the best phrasing... both approaches are related to hardware - it isn't a software bug per se that needs to be fixed - there's no magic bit of translation software that needs to get changed, but some sort of conflict with the hardware chip. The parameters of the chip can either be set with physical resistors (negating need for registers to be set via software), or can be set with software (negating the needs to have resistors used to set the registers). That's my understanding of the situation anyway.

Yes, Pete, you are correct.

Another thing to add is that with modern hardware ( hardware may be programmed ).  No, programming hardware is NOT software.    Back in the day IBM used to call this micro-code, and more recently we refer to it as firmware;  but its essentially "hardware" in that within its register configuration it does one thing or another, but is NOT turing complete meaning that it could do 'anything' or another.   The idea here is that ( however it happens ) the hardware setting Rx-delay must be disabled ! We may disable it with a pulldown resistor ( hardware ) or we may disable it by setting a hardware register ( also hardware ) .