Re: [PATCH] arch: m68k: remove incomplete, unusable Apollo hardware support

Hi Ethan,

Thanks for your patch!

On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 at 01:53, Ethan Nelson-Moore [off-list ref] wrote:

The m68k architecture contains very incomplete support for running on
Apollo Domain hardware. There are only timer, console, and framebuffer
drivers, and no storage or network drivers, so there is no way to

3c505 Ethernet support was indeed removed from the kernel a while
ago, and upstream never included the Apollo-specific parts
(CONFIG_APOLLO_ELPLUS).

practically use it. It is not even capable of rebooting by itself (see
dn_dummy_reset() in arch/m68k/apollo/config.c).

I didn't know that is a requirement;  one of the advantages of Linux
is that you never need to reboot ;-)

arch/m68k/apollo has only received tree-wide changes and fixes by
inspection in the entire Git history (since Linux 2.6.12-rc2), so there
is clearly no interest in completing support for Apollo hardware.
Remove it to reduce future maintenance workload.

There are no uses of the removed <asm/bootinfo-apollo.h> UAPI header or
the constants removed from the <asm/bootinfo.h> UAPI header on GitHub
or Debian Code Search.

Seems like you missed https://github.com/geertu/m68k-bootinfo...

Signed-off-by: Ethan Nelson-Moore <redacted>
---
 arch/m68k/Kbuild                             |   1 -
 arch/m68k/Kconfig.devices                    |   4 +-
 arch/m68k/Kconfig.machine                    |   8 -
 arch/m68k/apollo/Makefile                    |   6 -
 arch/m68k/apollo/apollo.h                    |   4 -
 arch/m68k/apollo/config.c                    | 240 --------
 arch/m68k/apollo/dn_ints.c                   |  50 --
 arch/m68k/configs/apollo_defconfig           | 595 -------------------
 arch/m68k/configs/multi_defconfig            |   1 -
 arch/m68k/include/asm/apollohw.h             |  90 ---
 arch/m68k/include/asm/config.h               |   2 -
 arch/m68k/include/asm/irq.h                  |   2 -
 arch/m68k/include/asm/setup.h                |  32 +-
 arch/m68k/include/uapi/asm/bootinfo-apollo.h |  29 -
 arch/m68k/include/uapi/asm/bootinfo.h        |   5 +-
 arch/m68k/kernel/head.S                      |  70 +--
 arch/m68k/kernel/setup_mm.c                  |   9 -
 drivers/video/fbdev/Kconfig                  |   8 -
 drivers/video/fbdev/Makefile                 |   1 -
 drivers/video/fbdev/dnfb.c                   | 307 ----------
 20 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 1445 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 arch/m68k/apollo/Makefile
 delete mode 100644 arch/m68k/apollo/apollo.h
 delete mode 100644 arch/m68k/apollo/config.c
 delete mode 100644 arch/m68k/apollo/dn_ints.c
 delete mode 100644 arch/m68k/configs/apollo_defconfig
 delete mode 100644 arch/m68k/include/asm/apollohw.h
 delete mode 100644 arch/m68k/include/uapi/asm/bootinfo-apollo.h
 delete mode 100644 drivers/video/fbdev/dnfb.c

Apart from dnfb, this only removes code under arch/m68k/.
Is any of the removed code blocking further development for you?
Thanks!

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds