Darren J Moffat wrote: > Garrett D'Amore - sun microsystems wrote: >> elxl is a closed source driver supporting certain legacy ethernet cards >> from 3Com. (The 3c905 line, and a few compatible family members.) Note >> that these NICs were not used on any Sun branded equipment, and have not >> been popular for many years. They are still available from >> discounters who >> have been selling refurbs and surplus, but are no longer >> manufactured. (3Com >> stopped offering these products in 2006.) > > Given how widespread these were and the fact it is/was also a well > supported network device on Linux and *BSD I'm a bit nervous about > removing support for this. The reason I have this card is because it > is/was well supported. > > I still have an OpenSolaris machine running snv_129 with a card driven > by elxl in it (100BASE-TX not 10BASE-2 or 10BASE-T). Yes it is old and > yes I could afford to buy a newer card (there is actually a second card > driven by rlts in the machine) but why should I have to ? > > Is this driver actually holding back other work ? Or is it just old and > not getting to benefit from new features ? If it isn't holding other > things back I'm not sure there is good motivation for an EOF and > removal. I understand the desire to remove any 10BASE-2 or 10BASE-T > support but there are cards out there driven by this driver that support > 100BASE-T (3Com 3c905B 100BaseTX Cyclone, 0x9055).
Indeed. And were are some test fixtures within Sun (likely still in use for IPMP) that depended on elxl -- because it was cheap, easy, and worked. What worries me more, though, are the odd chip vendors who reuse those old cores for new system-on-a-chip sorts of designs. We've run into that problem before (the GLDv0 EOF nuked support for several brand-new but obscure motherboards, despite the apparent obsolescence of the original stand-alone cards), and it wouldn't be good to encounter it again. These problems are almost always completely unfixable once found. If it must be removed for some reason, I think it'd be good to have a replacement developed. -- James Carlson 42.703N 71.076W <carlsonj at workingcode.com>
