Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 17:54:54 -0500 (EST) From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> To: jhb@freebsd.org Cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: I'd like to axe some drivers Message-ID: <201411202254.sAKMssPo065900@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> References: <201411201631.27556.jhb@freebsd.org>
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In article <201411201631.27556.jhb@freebsd.org>, John Baldwin writes: >ie(4): Unfortunately, someone actually found one of these and tested it > several years ago when I added locking to it. It is the only ISA > NIC driver that doesn't have a pccard attachment (you can in theory > still use a pccard NIC in a cardbus slot (though not ExpressCard)). > This also only does 10Mb using PIO (no DMA). It doesn't use > bus_space. The chip absolutely does do DMA, but at the time this driver was written, the only hardware I ever saw used dual-ported RAM (on the ISA bus) rather than DMA. (You'll recall that the ISA DMA controller was rather limited and could not operate autonomously in the way that a network controller needs.) I've been hoping this driver (which I wrote) would get axed for many many years, but someone has always stepped up in the past to save it. As a bonus, removing it also gets rid of a non-standard license from the tree (which I could never change since I no longer have a legal relationship with the University of Vermont). I haven't seen the hardware this was written for in more than 20 years, and I don't think I kept the databook. (For what it's worth, pretty much every Intel network controller designed since has had the same basic programming interface -- it's just the bus glue logic and the assignment of bits in the control blocks that changes!) -GAWollman
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