From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ondrej Zary Subject: Re: Compex FreedomLine 32 PnP-PCI2 broken with de2104x Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:31:25 +0100 Message-ID: <200802252231.27081.linux@rainbow-software.org> References: <200801262158.12016.linux@rainbow-software.org> <20080218032111.GA7970@colo.lackof.org> <47C26E0E.2070109@pobox.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Grant Grundler , Linux Kernel , netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Jeff Garzik Return-path: Received: from mail.atlantis.sk ([80.94.52.35]:41781 "EHLO mail.atlantis.sk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752099AbYBYVbe (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:31:34 -0500 In-Reply-To: <47C26E0E.2070109@pobox.com> Content-Disposition: inline Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Monday 25 February 2008 08:28:14 Jeff Garzik wrote: > Grant Grundler wrote: > > ISTR there was a time when tulip would compete with de4x5 for devices. > > tulip is the preferred driver. That's clearly no longer the case > > and perhaps both distro's need to revisit this. > > The only reason why de4x5 still exists is that the /tulip/ driver fails > to work on a few chips like the 21142 (43?) shipped in various alpha boxen. > > de4x5 needs to go away, it's been unmaintained for ages, doesn't support > any of the new hotplug APIs. But has extensive port auto-detection which seems to work great (at least on my card). I don't feel like porting that code to de2104x - the code looks complex. > > > de2104x is a "work in progress". > > That's why it's marked "EXPERIMENTAL" in the Kconfig file. > > It's not a work in progress, it works just fine for most people (the few > that are left). > > Last I heard, there was a problem with non-twisted-pair stuff, but > that's about it. > > 'experimental' is generally a poorly maintained marker. So we have two unmaintained drivers - one that works fine (and is production quality - or at least seems to be) but does not support hotplug APIs and one that was never finished (the TP-unplug problem is present at least since 2003). Perhaps de4x5 could be ported to new API(s)? I think that it's much easier than fixing obscure hardware-related problems like cable auto-detection. -- Ondrej Zary