Re: [POLITICAL] Re: ECS k7s5a audio sound SiS 735 - 7012

[Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>]

Gérard Roudier wrote:

> 
> On Sun, 4 Nov 2001, Manfred Spraul wrote:
> 
> 
>>Jeff Garzik wrote:
>>
>>>Gérard Roudier wrote:
>>>
>>>>different from Tekram adapters. Btw, my Netgear FA311 board is not handled
>>>>by the sis driver of linux-2.2.20 and my little finger tells me that it
>>>>could be so given a few code addition.
>>>>
>>>Unless you have a really strange board I haven't seen, NetGear FA311 are
>>>the natsemi DP83815/6 chips, handling by either "natsemi" or "fa311"
>>>drivers, not "sis900" driver...
>>>
>>>
>>sis900 and natsemi are similar, probably both could be handled with one
>>driver.
>>e.g. freebsd has one driver for natsemi and sis900.
>>
>>But I'm not a big fan of huge drivers that handle multiple 99%
>>compatible controllers and always break for one controller if you try to
>>fix another controller, so I won't try to merge them.
>>
> 
> So you would have preferred, for example, to have dozens of different
> drivers for SYM53C8XX chips and probably as many for Adaptec aic7xxx ones.
> And, probably, one set of different drivers per O/S. And why not one set
> per O/S major version and even per adjacent ones of the same O/S.
> 
> Given all the different brands that use similar or compatibles chips, the
> way you want drivers to be developped and maintained looks just
> unrealistic to me.


Jeff has intimate knowledge of the Tulip driver, one of the more complex
drivers that supports a bazillion different cards.  And also one of the hardest
to get (and keep) working on all of the devices it seems....

I think he has a very valid point....

Ben


> 
>   Gérard.
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> 
> 


-- 
Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>       <Ben_Greear AT excite.com>
President of Candela Technologies Inc      http://www.candelatech.com
ScryMUD:  http://scry.wanfear.com     http://scry.wanfear.com/~greear