RFC: should we deprecate unmaintained isa-only drivers?

RFC: should we deprecate unmaintained isa-only drivers?

[Christoph Hellwig]

We've got a few very old, isa-only SCSI HBA drivers in the tree.  Of
those only one (aha152x) sas significant maintaince since the dawn
of git, all others only saw global / automatic updates.  4 of those
are fairly trivial wrappers aroudn the NCR538 core, so I don't mind
keeping them:

 - dtc
 - g_NCR5380
 - pas16
 - t128

but I'd love to know if anyone is actually using the other drivers:

 - wd7000
 - aha1542
 - in2000
 - NCR53c406
 - sym53c416
 - u14-34f
 - ultrastor

note that the last two even drive the same hardware.  There is
significant cruft in all these, so dropping them would help
further maintainance of the SCSI midlayer.

Re: RFC: should we deprecate unmaintained isa-only drivers?

[Ondrej Zary]

On Tuesday 30 December 2014 17:06:16 Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> We've got a few very old, isa-only SCSI HBA drivers in the tree.  Of
> those only one (aha152x) sas significant maintaince since the dawn
> of git, all others only saw global / automatic updates.  4 of those
> are fairly trivial wrappers aroudn the NCR538 core, so I don't mind
> keeping them:
>
>  - dtc
>  - g_NCR5380
>  - pas16
>  - t128
>
> but I'd love to know if anyone is actually using the other drivers:
>
>  - wd7000
>  - aha1542
>  - in2000
>  - NCR53c406
>  - sym53c416
>  - u14-34f
>  - ultrastor
>
> note that the last two even drive the same hardware.  There is
> significant cruft in all these, so dropping them would help
> further maintainance of the SCSI midlayer.

I think I have a AHA-1542B ISA card so I can fix the aha1542 driver.

-- 
Ondrej Zary

Re: RFC: should we deprecate unmaintained isa-only drivers?

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 11:27:28PM +0100, Ondrej Zary wrote:
> > note that the last two even drive the same hardware.  There is
> > significant cruft in all these, so dropping them would help
> > further maintainance of the SCSI midlayer.
> 
> I think I have a AHA-1542B ISA card so I can fix the aha1542 driver.

Can you simply test that it even works for now?  If that's the case
add yourself to MAINTAINERS for it, and and convert it away from using
scsi_module.c as a start so that we get rid of the 10 year deprecated
old-style host registration.

Re: RFC: should we deprecate unmaintained isa-only drivers?

[Ondrej Zary]

On Wednesday 07 January 2015 15:34:32 Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 11:27:28PM +0100, Ondrej Zary wrote:
> > > note that the last two even drive the same hardware.  There is
> > > significant cruft in all these, so dropping them would help
> > > further maintainance of the SCSI midlayer.
> >
> > I think I have a AHA-1542B ISA card so I can fix the aha1542 driver.
>
> Can you simply test that it even works for now?  If that's the case
> add yourself to MAINTAINERS for it, and and convert it away from using
> scsi_module.c as a start so that we get rid of the 10 year deprecated
> old-style host registration.

Yes, it still works in 3.19-rc3:
[  691.940019] Configuring Adaptec (SCSI-ID 7) at IO:330, IRQ 11, DMA priority 7
[  691.942063] scsi host2: Adaptec 1542
[  691.943474] bounce: isa pool size: 16 pages
[  691.956495] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     IBM      DORS-32160       WA0A PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[  693.540016] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 4226725 512-byte logical blocks: (2.16 GB/2.01 GiB)
[  693.571820] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[  693.571911] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: b3 00 00 08
[  693.587551] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[  693.590061] sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[  693.593491] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[  693.721206]  sdb: sdb1
[  693.856355] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk


-- 
Ondrej Zary

Re: RFC: should we deprecate unmaintained isa-only drivers?

[Ondrej Zary]

On Tuesday 30 December 2014 17:06:16 Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> We've got a few very old, isa-only SCSI HBA drivers in the tree.  Of
> those only one (aha152x) sas significant maintaince since the dawn
> of git, all others only saw global / automatic updates.  4 of those
> are fairly trivial wrappers aroudn the NCR538 core, so I don't mind
> keeping them:
>
>  - dtc
>  - g_NCR5380
>  - pas16
>  - t128
>
> but I'd love to know if anyone is actually using the other drivers:
>
>  - wd7000
>  - aha1542
>  - in2000
>  - NCR53c406
>  - sym53c416
>  - u14-34f
>  - ultrastor

NCR53c406a and sym53c416 look very similar. The register numbers and commands 
are almost the same so NCR53c406 support could probably be added to sym53c416 
driver (looks better of the two) and NCR53c406a driver removed. Now I have 
cards with both chips so I'll try.

-- 
Ondrej Zary

Re: RFC: should we deprecate unmaintained isa-only drivers?

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 09:52:53PM +0100, Ondrej Zary wrote:
> NCR53c406a and sym53c416 look very similar. The register numbers and commands 
> are almost the same so NCR53c406 support could probably be added to sym53c416 
> driver (looks better of the two) and NCR53c406a driver removed. Now I have 
> cards with both chips so I'll try.

Cool, I'd love to see one high quality driver to handle the workload
of both the old ones!

> 
> -- 
> Ondrej Zary
---end quoted text---

Re: RFC: should we deprecate unmaintained isa-only drivers?

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 09:52:53PM +0100, Ondrej Zary wrote:
> >  - wd7000
> >  - aha1542
> >  - in2000
> >  - NCR53c406
> >  - sym53c416
> >  - u14-34f
> >  - ultrastor
> 
> NCR53c406a and sym53c416 look very similar. The register numbers and commands 
> are almost the same so NCR53c406 support could probably be added to sym53c416 
> driver (looks better of the two) and NCR53c406a driver removed. Now I have 
> cards with both chips so I'll try.

Did you get a chance to look at this project?

Re: RFC: should we deprecate unmaintained isa-only drivers?

[Ondrej Zary]

On Sunday 11 September 2016 19:01:55 Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 09:52:53PM +0100, Ondrej Zary wrote:
> > >  - wd7000
> > >  - aha1542
> > >  - in2000
> > >  - NCR53c406
> > >  - sym53c416
> > >  - u14-34f
> > >  - ultrastor
> >
> > NCR53c406a and sym53c416 look very similar. The register numbers and
> > commands are almost the same so NCR53c406 support could probably be added
> > to sym53c416 driver (looks better of the two) and NCR53c406a driver
> > removed. Now I have cards with both chips so I'll try.
>
> Did you get a chance to look at this project?

At first try (with some quick hacking only), the 53c406 card didn't work with 
sym53c416 driver. I haven't had time for more serious work back then. 
Hopefully I'll try harder soon.

-- 
Ondrej Zary