On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Ted Unangst <t...@tedunangst.com> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:13, Mark Kettenis wrote: >>> Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:20:27 -0400 >>> From: Ted Unangst <t...@tedunangst.com> >>> >>> These isa devs are already disabled and not particularly popular among >>> our users. affected: tcic, sea, wds, eg, el >> >> The reason these devices are disabled is probably that their probe >> routines are destructive. So the fact that they are disabled doesn't >> necessarily mean that they don't work properly. >> >> I don't think maintaining these drivers is currently a huge burden on >> us. But decoupling them from the build will almost certainly lead to >> some degree of bitrot. > > Perfection is achieved when there's nothing left to take away. :) > > It's not so much that we spend time maintaining the source, but I do > spend time compiling it. And I have to download it (3 times!) every > time I install a new snapshot. Cumulatively, I've probably spent hours > of my life waiting for these drivers' bits to go from here to there. I > will selfishly claim that if I save five minutes of time this year by > not compiling these files, that right there is more benefit than > retaining support. > > I targeted disabled devices figuring they were least likely to be > missed, but I honestly question the utility of any of these ISA > network and SCSI drivers. They're going to be slow as shit. Besides, > at this point, due to adding so many new drivers (kernel size has > more than doubled in last ten years) the minimum RAM requirement is > basically past ISA only machines. The segment of machines that lack > PCI but support 32M or more of RAM is very narrow. And unlike sparc or > vax, I don't think running OpenBSD on some ancient 486 is historically > interesting. >
I still run OpenBSD as a wireless AP on a pentium-1 166Mhz with 48Mb RAM, and 3 PCI cards. ISA sound card was removed :-) -- Brightest day, Blackest night, No bug shall escape my sight, And those who worship evil's mind, be wary of my powers, puffy lantern's light !
