1. 22 Jan, 2013 12 commits
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete the really obsolete 8390 based 10Mbit ISA drivers · fce3cd45
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      This is an area I know all too well, after being author of several 8390
      drivers, and maintainer of all 8390 drivers during a large part of their
      active lifecycle.
      
      To that end, I can say this with a reasonable degree of confidence.
      The drivers deleted here represent the earliest (as in early 1990)
      hardware and/or rare hardware.  The remaining hardware not deleted
      here is the more modern/sane of the lot, with ISA-PnP and jumperless
      "soft configuration" like the wd and smc cards had.
      
      The original ne2000 driver (ne.c) gets a pass at this time since
      AT/LANTIC based cards that could be both ne2000 or wd-like (with
      shared memory) and with jumperless configuration were made in the
      mid to late 1990's, and performed reasonably well for their era.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      fce3cd45
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete old fujitsu based eth16i driver · bb37f122
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      This is another driver for relatively rare 10Mbit hardware that
      originated in the early 1990's.  So we select it for removal at
      this point in time as well.
      
      Cc: Mika Kuoppala <miku@iki.fi>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      bb37f122
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete at1700 ISA 10Mbit driver · 13a80cb8
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      These Fujitsu MB86965 based ISA 10Mbit cards were another of the
      relatively rare cards dating from the early 1990s that for one reason
      or another didn't seem to get a lot of use in linux.  So we retire it
      now with a reasonable degree of confidence that it won't impact anyone.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      13a80cb8
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete old 8 bit ISA Racal ni5010 support. · d2477de7
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      These cards were only available in 8bit format, and in addition
      they only had AUI and BNC(10-Base2) interfaces (i.e. no RJ-45).
      
      In fact, they are so rare, that an internet search on these old
      cards almost comes up empty, unless the "Micom interlan" name
      is used.
      
      This puts them in the equivalent domain as the 3c501, so there
      should be no strong opposition to the driver removal, as nobody
      is seriously using 3.9+ with 8 bit ISA hardware.
      
      In doing so, the whole "ethernet/racal" category becomes empty,
      so we clean up the Makefile/Kconfig and subdir appropriately.
      
      Cc: Andreas Mohr <andi@lisas.de>
      Cc: Jan-Pascal van Best <janpascal@vanbest.org>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      d2477de7
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete Racal Interlan ISA ni52 (i825xx) driver · 04861c53
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      Like the other drivers that were in the ISA i825xx family, the ni52
      was rather rare, not widely used, and hence perhaps not as reliable
      as the more mainstream ISA drivers that were heavily used.  Given
      that, it is chosen for retirement at this time as well.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      04861c53
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete intel i825xx based znet notebook driver · 8a594170
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      This driver supported early to mid 1990's Zenith laptops, of the
      2" thick variety.  The driver was already dead 10+ years ago, but
      we see this in the source:
      
       ----------------
       /* 10/2002
      
       [...]
      
         Tested on a vintage Zenith Z-Note 433Lnp+. Probably broken on
         anything else. Testers (and detailed bug reports) are welcome :-).
       ----------------
      
      To clarify, a 433 translates into a 486 at 33MHz, and a system with
      a default of 4MB RAM.  I can't fault the noble effort to keep things
      working a decade ago, but at this point in time, there is no valid
      justification to continue carrying this driver along.
      
      Note that there is no associated Space.c cleanup here since this
      driver was using module_init to hook itself in.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      8a594170
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete ISA intel eexpress and eepro i825xx drivers · f84932d8
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      These old drivers should not be confused with the very common PCI
      cards that are supported by e100.c -- these older 10Mbit ISA only
      drivers were not as commonly used as some of the other ISA drivers,
      simply due to hardware availability and pricing.
      
      Given the rarity of the hardware, and the subsequent less extensive
      use of the drivers, it makes sense to obsolete them at this point
      in time, along with other rare/experimental ISA drivers.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      f84932d8
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete the 3Com 3c505/3c507 intel i825xx support · 0e245dba
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      For those of us who were around in the early to mid 1990's, we
      will remember that the i825xx ethernet support was not something
      that was considered sufficiently vetted for 24/7 use.
      
      Folks might be inclined to use *functional* ISA hardware on some
      near expired P3 ISA machines for dedicated workhorse applications,
      but the odds of using (and relying on) one of these old/experimental
      drivers is essentially nil.  So lets remove them.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      0e245dba
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete old parallel port de600/de620 drivers · 168e06ae
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      The parallel port is largely replaced by USB, and even in the
      day where these drivers were current, the documented speed was
      less than 100kB/s.  Let us not pretend that anyone cares about
      these drivers anymore, or worse - pretend that anyone is using
      them on a modern kernel.
      
      As a side bonus, this is the end of legacy parallel port ethernet,
      so we get to drop the whole chunk relating to that in the legacy
      Space.c file containing the non-PCI unified probe dispatch.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      168e06ae
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete old 8bit ISA 3c501 driver. · de8270ff
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      It was amusing that linux was able to make use of this 1980's
      technology on machines long past its intended lifespan, but
      it probably should go now.
      
      To set some context, the 3c501 was designed in the 1980's to be
      used on 8088 PC-XT 8bit ISA machines.  It was built using a large
      number of discrete TTL components and truly looks like a relic
      of the ancient past before large scale integration was common.
      
      But from a functional point of view, the real issue, as stated
      in the (also obsolete) Ethernet-HowTo, is that "...the 3c501 can
      only do one thing at a time -- while you are removing one packet
      from the single-packet buffer it cannot receive another packet,
      nor can it receive a packet while loading a transmit packet."
      
      You know things are not good when the Kconfig help text suggests
      you make a cron job doing a ping every minute.
      
      Hardware that old and crippled is simply not going to be used by
      anyone in a time where 10 year old 100Mbit PCI cards (that are
      still functional) are largely give-away items.
      
      Cc: Alan Cox <alan@linux.intel.com>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      de8270ff
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete intel 486 panther onboard ethernet support · 5205939d
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      This driver was specific to a "professional workstation" line
      of products from around 1993 that used the i82596 ethernet chip
      as an on-board ethernet solution.
      
      With a 486 processor, and the premium top of the line model maxing
      out at a clock speed of 50MHz, we can safely retire this support.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      5205939d
    • Paul Gortmaker's avatar
      drivers/net: delete 486 Apricot support · 6e07ba3e
      Paul Gortmaker authored
      The Apricot was a 486 PC with 4MB RAM, and an on-board ethernet
      via an intel i82596 hard-wired to i/o 0x300.
      
      Those who were using linux in the 1990's will recall that the
      i82596 driver was not one of the more stable or widely used
      drivers of its day.  Combine that with the extremely limited
      resources of the platform, and it is truly time to expire the
      support for this thing.
      
      There are some old m68k targets who were also using this chip,
      so rather than poll the m68k user base, we simply cut out the
      x86/Apricot support here in this commit.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
      6e07ba3e
  2. 21 Jan, 2013 28 commits