Programmer SFPTotal Whistle

Overview

The SFPTotal Whistle is a tiny coding board designed to support 1G SFP and 10G SFP+ transceivers including copper RJ45 SFP, DAC and AOC.

The coding board is manufactured in accordance to specifications MSA SFF-8074, SFF-8431, SFF-8472 and contains 20-pin SFP port (SFF-8431) covered metal cage and flat USB connector. The coding board support optical transceivers with power consumption up to 1.5 W. The device does not provide for the connection of an external power supply. The suppored power level is limited by the maximum current for USB 2.0 port.

The hardware design DOESN'T provide for the presence pinouts for power supply control and access to main I/O lines of the transceiver ports, that could be required for coding hardware protected transceivers.

SFPTotal Whistle based on USB interface converter chip: it doesn't contain embedded software and manages with an official software SFPTotal Wizard. The device operates on the I²C databus with low clocking frequency that makes negative effect on coding speed rate in compare with SFPTotal Mini or Plus series.

It contains everything needed to support EEPROM based SFP transceivers. Simply connect it directly to a computer USB port to get started.

Main Features

Compared with similar coding devices, SFPTotal Whistle has the following advantages:

• Supports transceivers with speed rate up to 10G on the one coding board
• Provides required power supply to connect optical transceviers up to 1.5 W
• Transceivers support doesn't limited on just one manufacturer
• Provides access to all address spaces of transceiver memory
• Makes possible to recode write-protected MSA transceivers (with restrictions)
• Supports coding with a script for non-MSA transceivers
• Has official software with friendly and convinient GUI
• Real-time access to Digital Diagnosting Monitoring interface
• Gives access to knowlege database and SFPTotal technical support.

Application

SFPTotal Whistle programmer is used for the following tasks:

• Coding fiber optical and copper transceivers, DAC, AOC
• Improving transceivers compatibility with brand network switching equipment
• Coding write-protected transceivers variouse manufacturers
• Access to PHY controller registers and manual configuration
• Reading DDM interface and check factory presets
• Code rebranding for OEM transceivers

Quick start

The coding board connects to PC directly to USB port. The operation system detects the device and intalls required Virtual Serial Port driver when device connected firstly. Follow simple steps to start:

1. Install SFPTotal Whistle driver
2. Download and run application SFPTotal Wizard

The SFPTotal coding board manages through official software SFPTotal Wizard which provides user interface to operate the coding board for write and read code and get access to the main features. Тhere is no preliminary configuration is required to start working with the program. SFPTotal Wizard will automatically detect original coding board connected to the PC.

After installing the driver on some versions of Windows OS, a mandatory system reboot is required for the virtual serial port driver to work correctly.

Activation key

SFPTotal Whistle is supplied with pre-loaded activation key and ready for work when connected

Coding optical transceivers

Coding unlocked transceivers

The most optical transceivers with unlocked memory contain EEPROM chip such as 24C02 which stores informtaion about transceiver form factor, wavelength, transmission technology, speedrate, encoding type, vendor name, serial number and etc. That solution presented in a lot of cheap gigabit transceivers and DAC which don't support DDM function. The memory of those transceivers can be rewritten normally without any restriction from the transceiver.

In such transceivers, as a rule, only the A0H page is available for reading, but reading the A2H page returns an error. You need just import a vendor code into the software or edit a generic code from the module, then press <Write> button to write to such modules. The coding board returns <WRITE OK > response when the write successfuly done.

You can use the transceiver with updated vendor code after that!

Coding write-protected transceivers

In accordance with the MSA SFF-8472 specification, DDM capable transceivers can be write protected and require entry a 4 byte password to unlock the memory before write any change.

Such modules operate under the control of a special microcontroller, which emulates an EEPROM chip and provides write functionality in I2C slave mode. Also, it can work as a buffer for EEPROM and control Write Protect pin of the memory chip. An attempt to write to such a transceiver without a password or with an incorrect password returns an error - <WRITE FAIL>.

The software SFPTotal Wizard supports the function to change a write settings and makes able to set a password value to unlock the memory before saving new changes. In addition, the software allows to create complex programming algorithms in the form of scripts. It makes possible to code transceivers that require factory coding method what is incompatible with specification MSA.