Re: [PATCH 0/2] net: ethernet: Remove the 8390 network drivers

On Sun, Aug 8, 2021 at 10:39 PM Michael Schmitz [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Two candidates I can see for removing would be smc-ultra and
wd80x3, both of them fairly rare ISA cards. The only other
ISA 8390 variant is the ne2000 driver (ne.c), which is probably
the most common ISA card overall, and I'd suggest leaving
that in place for as long as we support CONFIG_ISA.

That particular driver is the one I rely on (via a weird ROM-port to ISA
bridge). Would be useful even after ISA bus support is gone, in that
case. Just saying. The Amiga and Mac drivers likewise. Though you may
well argue that once ISA support has been removed, these can all be
rewritten to support MMIO more directly (and more flexibly).

I don't think we are anywhere near removing ISA support (probably
not before removing EISA, which in turn is required for some platforms),
but that was what I implied: No point removing NE2000 support as long as
there are platforms or bus types using that driver (Q40, Atari, TX49xx),
and even the ISA version of NE2000 may outlive other CONFIG_ISA
itself because it is a typical emulation target.

quoted

There are a couple of other ISA-only network drivers (localtalk,
arcnet,  ethernet/amd) that may be candidates for removal,
or perhaps some PCMCIA ones.

ethernet/amd has the other set of network card drivers used on m68k
(*lance).

Same here, I specifically mean the drivers that are /only/ used for ISA
here: CONFIG_LANCE and CONFIG_NI65, not the various other lance
variants.

       Arnd