Forwarding this to discuss -- if you care about PCMCIA (16-bit!) speak up. I'm
of the opinion we'll be better off without it, but this gives anyone actually
*using* this stuff a chance to make a case for saving it...
- Garrett
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Garrett D'Amore <[email protected]>
> Subject: Proposal: EOF pcmcia bits
> Date: September 25, 2013 11:21:54 AM PDT
> To: "[email protected] Developer" <[email protected]>
> Cc: Bart Coddens <[email protected]>
>
> I would like to propose (and maybe this was done previously) the final EOF of
> the PCMCIA bits. Its important to note that this proposal *only* affects
> 16-bit PCMCIA. The 32-bit Cardbus support (while also crufty) is not
> included in this proposal.
>
> The proposal specifically is for the removal of:
>
> * pcan - Cisco Aeronet 802.11b driver.
> * pcwl - Intersil Prism 802.11b driver
> * pcata/pcide and friends
> * sys/pccard.h
> * csx_ card CardServices kernel routines
> * pcs place holder driver
>
> Further, it would be impossible to support 16-bit PCMCIA on illumos after
> this proposal integrates.
>
> A bit more detail.
>
> 1. PCMCIA is 16-bit only
> 2. PCMCIA does not support DMA, so all these devices use incredibly slow PIO
> 3. pcan in theory also supports a PCI card, but I've never seen one in the
> wild. It was never a very popular device, because they were pretty expensive
> compared to the Prism cards.
> 4. pcwl devices *were* popular (probably the most common 802.11b PC card.)
> Additionally the driver "supports" a miniPCI variant (PRISM 2.5). However,
> the miniPCI variant has a nasty erratum which can hard hang easily, and the
> pcwl driver lacks the fix for this. (I have some information on fixing it,
> but I never got around to getting this work done for the open pcwl driver as
> I didn't get approval from Intersil or Tadpole to open source the equivalent
> work I did for the Tadpole driver for the same chip.)
> 5. Neither pcan nor pcwl support modern WPA (never mind WPA2). This makes
> them mostly useless for anything except wide open wireless networks.
> 6. pcata and friends are for PCMCIA memory cards, the most common variant of
> which was CF. However, all modern systems that still have CF support do so
> over much faster IDE, SATA, or USB interfaces. The only exceptions to these
> are certain embedded platforms (e.g. MIPS Alchemy boards) that have no chance
> of ever running illumos.
>
> The main motivation for this change is general housekeeping -- this code is
> thoroughly bitrotten and I don't know of anyone who's used any of this stuff
> in the last several years. (I was probably one of the last users on certain
> SPARC hardware, but that was about 5 years ago now, I guess, and I removed
> the SPARCLE platform support from illumos years ago.) The other thing is
> that these interfaces -- the pcmcia nexus in particular, make use of some
> other legacy kernel interfaces, which we would like to clean up. Removing
> the pcmcia nexus support will allow the existing cardbus stack to be cleaned
> up, and will allow some of the underlying legacy interfaces to also be
> cleaned up and simplified. (In particular, the interfaces most directly
> benefiting from this will be the legacy power management interfaces; see
> illumos bug 680.
>
> So, with that goal stated, please indicate any specific reasons for objecting
> to this change, with supporting details. Such reasons might indicate current
> or planned use of these interfaces (seems unlikely), or any reason(s) that
> anyone knows of specific risks.
>
> As a follow up, I'd also like to hear (more as a matter of a survey than
> anything else) if anyone out there is using CardBus. My guess is that even
> that has fallen by the way side, having been thoroughly supplanted by
> ExpressCard and USB. If it turns out that even CardBus is of little or not
> use, I'd be happy to nuke that as well -- frankly it would make the task
> easier if I don't have to extricate cardbus and could just nuke the entire
> pcic nexus. :-)
>
> Thanks.
>
> - Garrett
>
>
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