could someone please shed some light on why do we have this
printf on some of the architectures but not on the others?
what purpose did it serve before? does anyone use it?
Decades ago, the printf was added because it was important to check
the masks; in particular, for the splnet/spltty cross-|'ing hack to
support ppp/slip. When apic support came in it gathered a new purpose
-- allowing us to easily spot the pic-only machines (especially the
almost-all-interrupts-on-one pin machines such as the X40) easily in
dmesg, and thus not get confused and chase the wrong bugs.
Nowadays, the message has no value since the pic handling must be
perfect (enough), so you can go and clean this up.
