Re: FCP-101: obsolete driver removal planned for 2019-05-18

On Sun, 2019-05-12 at 10:45 -0700, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > 12.05.2019 8:21, Warner Losh wrote:
> > 
> > >     >> I've posted a review to remove obsolete 10 and 10/100
> > > Ethernet drivers
> > >     >> as previous approved in FCP-101.
> > >     >> The following drivers are slated for
> > >     >> removal from FreeBSD-HEAD (to be FreeBSD-13):
> > >     >> ae, bm, cs, de, ed, ep, ex, fe, pcn, sf, sn, tl, tx, txp,
> > > vx, wb, xe
> > >     > OMG ! ed ! That EOL's loads of PC boxes I have (& a show
> > > box of
> > >     > spare)  that will never be able to upgrade.
> > >     Do those boxes have 10M-only or 100Mbps variants of ed(4)?
> > >     What kind of hardware do they have (CPU and memory-wise)?
> > > 
> > > There are no 100M ed variants. There are some PC Card variants
> > > that have 100M MII connections, but they are limited to about
> > > 12Mbps due to bus limits. Even the PCI ones didn't have 100M mii
> > > connections. 
> > 
> > There was RTL8029AS "NE2000-compatible" 100M 32 bit PCI 2.1
> > adapter.
> > Not sure if ed(4) supports RTL8029AS.
> 
> That is what I was hunting for, but I can not seem to
> locate a data sheet on that.  
> 
> I also thought there was a 100mb version of the DP83905,
> but can not seem to locate any data thier either.
> 
> Given this lack of findable data I shall continue to support
> the ed removal, unless Julian comes up with the needed criteria,
> and with holding my own fact that I do have a pile of these
> around, but they are not in use and are only retained for
> testing and resurection of ancient things.
> 

We should not lose track of the fact that the operative question here
isn't "are you using an ed(4) device?", but rather "do you have systems
containing an ed(4) device which are capable of running freebsd 13 and
that you plan on updating to freebsd 13 or later?"

Many of the systems that contained these old devices don't have enough
ram to run a modern version of freebsd.  If you can't update the system
to 13, you don't need ongoing ed(4) support.  And make no mistake,
ongoing support IS the issue -- it costs manpower we don't have much of
to maintain old device drivers.

-- Ian