GENERIC - Raising the bar

[Bill Hacker]

Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:

On Sat, Mar 12, 2005 at 04:44:20AM +0800, Bill Hacker wrote:
*SNIP*

that's the timer code and that's the ISA-only support. I know that
both work at least on a i486 I acquired just for testing.
Have a 386 20 MHz double-sigma somewhere - only kept 'coz the faithful
little beast ran for six months, (not 24 x7!) at 40 MHz w/o a heat-sink...
Went through over ten gallons of technical grade isopropanol coolant, 
though... :-)
(stuff is wickedly hygroscopic..)

Since ISA is needed for a current system anyway, there's no pressing
reason to generally make this system not work by default.
ACK. Embedded in silicon, more's the pity...

A completely
different thing is removing unmaintained drivers for ancient hardware,
e.g. the pre-newpcm sound drivers. Since noone said something in favour
for them, they will be removed soon.
Could perhaps do the same for whole generations of ISA-bus only SCSI, etc.
The bus may live on in the ~bridge, but rare to find an external socket 
or a need
for the older gear this year or in the future, even counting PCMCIA/cardbus.

- and - separate topic - but I would guess full 80% of the ports tree 
wouldn't be
missed.  If only we knew *which* 80%  w/o a war .....

But that, at least, is a 'labor of love' for those maintainers fond of a 
given port.
Not so much a load on project core.

Seems to be 'on track'.

NNNN