Re: [PATCH net-next] eth: de4x5: remove support for Generic DECchip & DIGITAL EtherWORKS PCI/EISA

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

On Thu, 2022-05-26 at 09:43 +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>  	Hi Ben,
> 
> On Sat, 21 May 2022, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > On Wed, 2022-05-18 at 20:13 -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > > Looks like almost all changes to this driver had been tree-wide
> > > refactoring since git era begun. There is one commit from Al
> > > 15 years ago which could potentially be fixing a real bug.
> > > 
> > > The driver is using virt_to_bus() and is a real magnet for pointless
> > > cleanups. It seems unlikely to have real users. Let's try to shed
> > > this maintenance burden.
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
> > 
> > Removing this driver will kill support for some rather old PowerMac
> > models (some PowerBooks I think, paulus would know). No objection on my
> > part, though. I doubt people still use these things with new kernels
> > but ... who knows ? :-)
> 
> Aren't these PCI, and thus working fine with the PCI-only DE2104X
> (dc2104x) or TULIP (dc2114x) drivers?
> 
> IIRC, I've initially used the de4x5 driver on Alpha (UDB/Multia) or PPC
> (CHRP), but switched to the TULIP driver later (that was before the
> dc2104x/dc2114x driver split, hence a loooong time ago).

I'm pretty sure there were some old Macs who worked with de4x5 and not
tulip but I wouldn't rememeber the details and I'm not sure any of this
hardware still exist in the field nor matters.

Cheers,
Ben.