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User Plea Means EISA Support Not Removed From Linux

Posted by timothy on from the otherwise-the-city-will-be-destroyed dept.

jones_supa writes A patch was proposed to the Linux Kernel Mailing List to drop support for the old EISA bus. However a user chimed in: "Well, I'd like to keep my x86 box up and alive, to support EISA FDDI equipment I maintain if nothing else — which in particular means the current head version of Linux, not some ancient branch." Linus Torvalds was friendly about the case: "So if we actually have a user, and it works, then no, we're not removing EISA support. It's not like it hurts us or is in some way fundamentally broken, like the old i386 code was (i386 kernel page fault semantics really were broken, and the lack of some instructions made it more painful to maintain than needed — not like EISA at all, which is just a pure add-on on the side)." In addition to Intel 80386, recent years have also seen MCA bus support being removed from the kernel. Linux generally strives to keep support even for crusty hardware if there provably is still user(s) of the particular gear.

134 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Crusty Hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find it hard to believe that anyone is using EISA still. It got almost no traction in desktops and the only systems that ever had EISA slots were 386-486 era servers before the VL-BUS and PCI bus started to gain traction in late 486's.

    If someone actually has a working EISA system, I'd like to see a photo. I had never managed to see more than one of these systems in my lifetime, and only saw one because it was being replaced in 1997 by a Pentium desktop.

    I've actually seen more MCA systems than I've ever seen EISA.

    1. Re:Crusty Hardware by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm surprised to see someone still using it myself (I've seen a few of them in the distant past, though...)

      On the other hand, this is some hella stark contrast to certain other OS makers, who go out of their way to dump support for something as soon as they can in order to keep you on that upgrade treadmill - even if it means being forced to buy new hardware.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:Crusty Hardware by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      My first tech job ten years ago was a Token Ring to Ethernet network conversion at a local branch office for a Wall Street firm. That was the first and last time I saw Token Ring in the wilds. Some Wall Street firms today are still using Token Ring.

    3. Re:Crusty Hardware by Carewolf · · Score: 2

      I find it hard to believe that anyone is using EISA still. It got almost no traction in desktops and the only systems that ever had EISA slots were 386-486 era servers before the VL-BUS and PCI bus started to gain traction in late 486's.

      If someone actually has a working EISA system, I'd like to see a photo. I had never managed to see more than one of these systems in my lifetime, and only saw one because it was being replaced in 1997 by a Pentium desktop.

      I've actually seen more MCA systems than I've ever seen EISA.

      EISA was parallel with VL-BUS for a long time, where consumer hardware used VL-BUS and enterprise or server hardware used EISA. PCI replaced both that wasn't until the mid 1990s. Still 20 years ago though.

    4. Re:Crusty Hardware by ArcadeMan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      On the other hand, this is some hella stark contrast to certain other OS makers, who go out of their way to dump support for something as soon as they can in order to keep you on that upgrade treadmill - even if it means being forced to buy new hardware.

      You're talking about IBM's OS/2, right?

      Sent from my PowerPC Mac mini which cannot run Yosemite.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    5. Re:Crusty Hardware by ArcadeMan · · Score: 5, Funny

      I've seen a firm where they still use a Tolkien Ring. It's their most prized possession.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    6. Re:Crusty Hardware by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      I meant both Apple and Microsoft (albeit to a slightly lesser extent for Microsoft, though they seem to be embracing what Apple has going in that department.)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    7. Re:Crusty Hardware by MadKeithV · · Score: 5, Funny

      I've seen a firm where they still use a Tolkien Ring. It's their most prized possession.

      I'm sure you meant to say their most precious possession.

    8. Re:Crusty Hardware by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      Vesa local bus was kind of like AGP in that people mostly used it for graphics cards. PCs back then still had ISA slots for everything else.

      Since these couldn't autoconfigure back then you had to mess with IRQs and shit. I hated that after having come from the Amiga. Thank God they fixed that mess.

    9. Re:Crusty Hardware by hughbar · · Score: 2

      This way, sanity lies too, the resource cost of manufacturing new PC is enormous: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... so doing it just to put money in the pockets of Microsoft, Apple etc. is an aberration.

      I recently changed my desktop but it was about 10 years old and I've given it to a recycling company. I've been able to do that because I'm a Linux user, it would have worked for BSD etc. too.

      --
      On y va, qui mal y pense!
    10. Re:Crusty Hardware by HBI · · Score: 4, Informative

      AC, the Compaq Deskpro line implemented EISA. While these systems rarely saw use in homes, banks were full of the things as were other firms. Deskpros were built like tanks up until about 1996. I installed lots of EISA NICs, in particular.

      My point is that there were more of these systems out there than you think.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    11. Re:Crusty Hardware by satsuke · · Score: 1

      Not entirely true ..

      Back in those days, you didn't have serial/parallel, floppy, or IDE/disk controllers built into the motherboard,. At least not on non-Dell/Gateway/Micron/IBM computers.

      All of those functions were built onto a VESA slot board alongside the video card.

      You _could_ have that stuff on an ISA board, but you lost quite a bit of performance.

    12. Re:Crusty Hardware by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      People stopped using all that crap once the Pentium Triton chipset came out with PCI support. PCs back then still had some ISA slots but VLB and EISA basically vanished.

      So does Linux have i486 support?

    13. Re:Crusty Hardware by BitZtream · · Score: 2

      So basically you want Apple and Microsoft to keep supporting your crusty old hardware with new features that it doesn't support anyway?

      Both Apple and Microsoft provide 'support' longer than pretty much any other software maker on the planet, including any Linux vendor you can name.

      Get a clue fanboy.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    14. Re:Crusty Hardware by HBI · · Score: 2

      Bad form (replying to myself) but, I imagine many readers weren't even out of diapers when the last EISA system shipped. EISA slots supported ISA cards as well - the slots were dual use and had special keyed connectors that reached down lower in the slot when operating in 32-bit EISA mode. To an 8 or 16 bit ISA card, the slots were standard ISA slots for all intents and purposes, except that you had to run the EISA config utility (kind of like a BIOS config, but software rather than firmware) to get the system on board with what you were doing.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    15. Re:Crusty Hardware by morgauxo · · Score: 1

      "I had never managed to see more than one of these systems in my lifetime"

      When I was in college I worked for the campus (NPR, not student) radio station. I wasn't a DJ, did tech work there. Anyway.. that was around the same time you were replacing that EISA system.

      We were on a tight budget (hey, it's public radio, what do you expect). During my time there we put the first computers in the studios as well as everyone's offices. Previously only a few managers had computers.

      Anyway... to accomplish this we used to get old computers from other university departments. I'm talking real old, like original IBM ATs and knockoffs from the same era. We would hack the case with a nibbler and pop-rivet gun to fit a standard motherboard. We kept the power supply, floppy drives and sometimes they had usable hard drives. Yes.. we installed Windows 95 (and later 98) on MFM hard drives!

      My boss, the engineer had a source for 486 motherboard, CPU + RAM combos. Depending on CPU speed and amount of RAM they were either $10 or $15! This all sounds horribly obsolete but at the time it was plenty good enough to run the then current web browsers, Office and email. Anything beyond that they probably weren't supposed to be doing anyway. In an era when new PCs were still $1500+ we were equiping people for under $50.

      Well.. back to the point.. these motherboards had EISA slots and somehow the boss managed to get ahold of a handful of EISA video cards. Those computers that got the EISA cards did seem to run a lot faster!

      So.. long story short.. I have seen more EISA cards than you. :-P

    16. Re:Crusty Hardware by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Vesa local bus was kind of like AGP in that people mostly used it for graphics cards. PCs back then still had ISA slots for everything else.

      Since these couldn't autoconfigure back then you had to mess with IRQs and shit. I hated that after having come from the Amiga. Thank God they fixed that mess.

      VLB was an aberration. It basically was a direct link to the 486 processor - it was so heavily tied that the Pentium basically ended it (since it wasn't a 486 and used a new bus).

      VLB was fast, but it was basically a stopgap - the 486 was so fast, ISA was so slow (but had a ton of peripherals) that there was no expansion bus technology available (I suppose they could use NuBus, which was TI (and used by Apple), but that was the wrong endian) as PCI was not quite done yet.

      The Pentium basically introduced PCI.

      AGP was an offshoot of PCI meant to offer higher bandwidth because PCI, despite having 66+MHz and 64 bit extensions, pretty much everything was tied to the 32-bit, 33MHz variant.

      AGP appeared to the system as a regular PCI bus when enumerated (it basically WAS PCI, just signalled faster) and lasted until PCI Express came out. Interestingly, we've not exceeded the capabilities of PCIe yet as you can often use fewer lanes and not see a drop in graphics performance.

    17. Re:Crusty Hardware by morgauxo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I loved being able to set the IRQs and memory addresses. Ok, not really but the for the first decade or so I HATED plug and play, or plug and pray as we called it in my office. Half the time it didn't work! It would try to put things right on top of one another. When possible I would disable it and just use the jumpers. Once you got used to it it wasn't THAT hard and it was great knowing that your soundcard was on IRQ X and your video on IRQY and never the two would conflict. Early plug and play seemed to randomly decide to reshuffle things and the next time you boot it may not still work.

      That was of course a long time ago and things work well on any reasonable hardware today. But.. I still cringe when people complain about setting IRQs. It's not hard to move a jumper and its not that complicated of a concept to know that to things probably shouldn't try to use the same resource. Not being able to set those things caused me far far more frustration than having to set them ever did! Even though things are great now I'm not entirely sure that decade of pain was worth it to get here.

    18. Re:Crusty Hardware by jeffmflanagan · · Score: 1

      Token Ring was fun. You could convince noobs that they'd let the token out of an open connection, and ruined the network.

    19. Re:Crusty Hardware by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So basically you want Apple and Microsoft to keep supporting your crusty old hardware with new features that it doesn't support anyway?

      You're approaching it from the hobbyist/end-user viewpoint - turn in your geek card, please. The corporate/enterprise side of things will actually keep hardware around a whole hell of a lot longer, and industrial use cases keep old crap around the longest of all.

      Example? No problem, I got a ton of those, including this little gem I dealt with a couple of years ago: Company spent millions on a certain specialized (solar cell) wafering machine whose computer still uses a parallel port (remember those?)/ It's a year or two out from ROI when it breaks down, but the manufacturer won't update or repair anything w/o the company spending millions on a new machine. Why? Because they stopped issuing patches/drivers for the machine long ago when Microsoft decided to drop their OS support, and the old stuff won't support USB enough to allow for a USB/Parport adapter.

      This has fuck-all to do with fanboy ideology, and everything with having to keep systems up in situations where they need to.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    20. Re:Crusty Hardware by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      I used a synonym on purpose so it wouldn't be too obvious.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    21. Re:Crusty Hardware by operagost · · Score: 1

      I had an AMD 486DX-40 system with two VLB slots. I had both VLB graphics and multi-I/O. Before the Pentium era, a motherboard didn't usually have all the basic I/O on it, so you had to buy a card with serial, parallel, and usually an IDE controller on it. Anyway, the second most annoying thing with VLB is that it ran at your FSB speed, so if you had a 25 MHz FSB you could have three cards, 33 MHz you could have two. I had 40, so I was only supposed to have one. It was surprisingly stable, but when I had the occasional video glitch I understood why it happened and could deal. It got better when I dumped the Computer Shopper white-box special for a DX2/80 with a decent ASUS board.

      The most annoying thing with VLB being, of course, that every card was almost full-length because the VLB part sat behind the ISA slot. They popped out all the time.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    22. Re:Crusty Hardware by Iniamyen · · Score: 3, Funny

      Aren't they running Frodo?

    23. Re:Crusty Hardware by morgauxo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What the fuck are you talking about?

      I've watched my parents throw away perfectly good printer/scanner combos that were only a few years old because there were no drivers beyond XP.

      I have dozens of network and video adapters on a shelf in my garage that work great in Linux but have no Windows drivers beyond XP.

      Until recently even a 386 could run Linux!

      Linux vendor? I wouldn't know. I've never used one. I can install my own software thank you!

    24. Re:Crusty Hardware by freeze128 · · Score: 2

      The EISA spec is a lot like the color implementation of NTSC video. It was something that was added on top of ISA so that it would work just fine with OLDER ISA-only cards. The EISA setup programs of the time were especially clunky. This was just before the widespread use of flashable BIOS ROMS on the motherboard, so there was a system partition on the hard drive that contained the program (think of a rudimentary EFI EPS partition) and the settings. One of the major features was that hardware settings for add-in cards could be configured via this setup partition rather than via jumpers or dipswitches.

      When was the last time you set a jumper or dipswitch on your motherboard or add-in card?

    25. Re:Crusty Hardware by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Replacing the ESC button with a red PANIC button on the keyboard and convincing the noobs not to press that button under any circumstances was funnier.

    26. Re:Crusty Hardware by FreonTrip · · Score: 1

      Yes, for the time being i486 support's still maintained. Debian and Slackware both nominally support it, and I suppose a very patient person could also flog their 486 nearly to death with Gentoo. Though I'd think a sane person would cross-compile...

    27. Re:Crusty Hardware by FreonTrip · · Score: 1

      You can still occasionally find a DIP switch on overclocker-friendly motherboards to ratchet up clock speeds and apply a corresponding voltage bump; the vagaries of that are handled by the BIOS/UEFI. But the only jumpers I ever see are for CMOS flashing, and maybe once in a blue moon to enable or disable an integrated component. It's definitely not 1995 any more.

    28. Re:Crusty Hardware by jandrese · · Score: 1

      ISA Plug and Play was a horrendous hack. It was always a roll of the dice. It's really no surprise that people were so willing to jump on PCI as soon as it came out.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    29. Re:Crusty Hardware by FreonTrip · · Score: 1

      That's CMOS resetting, my bad. *cough*

    30. Re: Crusty Hardware by Bigbuzzman · · Score: 1

      Starting around VLB time I started to run into computers with the cards hot glued to the sockets.

    31. Re: Crusty Hardware by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      I had a dual pentium motherboard with eisa slots once, made by Asus iirc. Used to sit in a server of a German content management software company.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    32. Re:Crusty Hardware by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Back in the early to mid-90's, I admined a 486/33 (no bloody SX/DX suffix). It ran SCO ODT 2.0, and functioned as a departmental development server, supporting about 20 devs.

      It had an Adaptec 1740 EISA SCSI-2 adapter, and an early Diamond S3(?) video card.

      I *LOVED* that box, and wish I had tried to purchase it after they removed the classified media and decommissioned it. The thing was a frickin' tank, with a steel enclosure.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    33. Re:Crusty Hardware by armanox · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Apple and Microsoft are far behind in terms of support from what I see.

      SGI IRIX 6.5: 1998-2014
      Solaris 10: 2005-2021
      Solaris 11: 2011-2024
      If I want long term support, I know I'm not going for a Windows systems or a Linux box. Know where to go for it (I'm sure that IBM and HP have some long lifecycles too....but I'm less versed in AIX, i, HP-UX, and OpenVMS)

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    34. Re:Crusty Hardware by ZorinLynx · · Score: 1

      I remember VIP 486 boards. VESA-LB, ISA and PCI in one motherboard. Very awesome if you had a really expensive VLB video card that you didn't want to part with quite yet, but wanted to upgrade to a system with PCI. :)

    35. Re: Crusty Hardware by ZorinLynx · · Score: 1

      The VLB card connector was really long and would sometimes make a poor connection or start to pop out. Hot glue was a common hack to make sure the card stayed in, and it was reversible (just heat the glue and pop it out).

      It truly was a dark age. But we all loved it. :)

    36. Re:Crusty Hardware by ZorinLynx · · Score: 1

      That was the reliable way to run the DX50, because VLB was unreliable at 50MHz. You were lucky to be able to afford something so kick-ass back then!

      I bet you ran DOOM at 60FPS! ;)

    37. Re:Crusty Hardware by NJRoadfan · · Score: 1

      I somehow managed to land up with 3 EISA/VLBus 486 motherboards. They appear to be workstation class boards as 2 of them have 16(!) 30pin SIMM slots and take 256MB of RAM. The hardware is out there, but its fairly uncommon.The latest boards I have seen with EISA were 440FX based Pentium Pro and Pentium II boards (almost always SMP server boards). Any support for it seems to have been dropped starting with the 440LX chipset, so PCI effectively killed it off. The latest motherboard made with EISA dates to around 1996-97, so either way that guy is running some old hardware. I wonder what is special about that FDDI card though?

    38. Re:Crusty Hardware by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      On the Token Ring to EtherNet job I did, the fresh out of high school techs plugged the Ethernet cable into the Token Ring card (which took both coaxial and twisted-pair cables) and didn't bother to run the network TV app to catch their error on 200 PCs. I made an extra four hours in OT pay because the project manager let them go without checking their work.

    39. Re:Crusty Hardware by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      I've been able to do that because I'm a Linux user, it would have worked for BSD etc. too.

      I have a 10-year-old Mac running an older version of MacOS. I'd still have an 8-year old XP machine if the hard drive hadn't crapped out. It's nice that Linux continues to be updated for older hardware, but you can certainly keep an old Mac/PC running for a long time.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    40. Re:Crusty Hardware by jcdr · · Score: 1

      There is still embedded systems running Linux that use ISA bus. My company maintain one such system that run every day in a public transportation system. At the time (around 2005) the system was designed (by a now defunct company), it was a fast project that reused schematics from previous successful projects to lower the risk.

      You can find a photo of the system CPU board in this manual: support.elmark.com.pl/advantech/pdf/SOM-4481man.pdf

    41. Re:Crusty Hardware by David_Hart · · Score: 1

      What the fuck are you talking about?

      I've watched my parents throw away perfectly good printer/scanner combos that were only a few years old because there were no drivers beyond XP.

      I have dozens of network and video adapters on a shelf in my garage that work great in Linux but have no Windows drivers beyond XP.

      Until recently even a 386 could run Linux!

      Linux vendor? I wouldn't know. I've never used one. I can install my own software thank you!

      What are you talking about? You do realize that Microsoft has no control over vendor hardware or their creation of drivers? It's not Microsoft's fault if the vendor dropped support.

      I agree that it's annoying when vendors dropped the ball on developing drivers for the new driver model in Vista/Win 7. That being said, there are tricks that allow you to install the Windows NT drivers for older hardware on Windows 7, 8, 8.1. Most older hardware, that had XP drivers, also had NT drivers.

    42. Re:Crusty Hardware by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      Meanwhile in that era, us Apple users plugged in & played with our NuBus cards without ever having to fiddle with IRQs. Doing things right the first time saved us a lot of aggravation.

      (Get off my lawn, etc. )

    43. Re:Crusty Hardware by cyberspittle · · Score: 1

      I have a NICE Super EISA with plenty of EISA cards in it. 2MB ATI Mach32 EISA. 3COM 10/100 EISA, Adaptec EISA, additional Mach64 on the 1 VLB slot. RAM maxed out to 256MBs (16 16MB SIMMS) with interleave enabled. It was meant to run Netware 3.12, but I used it for IBM OS/2 Warp (version 3), until I downloaded original Slackware floppy images via the ISA 33.6 MODEM (in EISA lost). Have a Crystal Semi sound card (ISA in EISA slot). CPU been upgraded to a Trinity Stacker 133Mhz from the original 486DX2/66, which was upgraded from a 486SX25. I keep this old beast in a full AT tower (has the large L-shaped power supply).

    44. Re:Crusty Hardware by JackieBrown · · Score: 2

      I think what he's saying is that linux manages to retain support for these while Windows 7,8,8.1 needs active vendor support to keep it working

    45. Re:Crusty Hardware by hughbar · · Score: 1

      Yes, agree, but the problem also with XP is end-of-life. Shame because it was one of their best ones too!

      --
      On y va, qui mal y pense!
    46. Re:Crusty Hardware by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      EOL doesn't really have any practical effect on a 10-year-old system, though. I mean, unless you have it hooked directly to the internet or use IE. I don't think even a totally unpatched XP would be a problem if you stuck to an alternative browser and surfed behind a NAT. Pehaps in a few more years when even software stops supporting XP.... that's what made me leave 98SE, and then later 2000. I only dumped XP because once the hard drive went, I couldn't really justify putting money into such an old system when I could get all-new guts for under $200. And once you have new guts you really need to reinstall Windows. And once you are doing that, why not use 7? Now I'm good for the next 10 years :)

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    47. Re:Crusty Hardware by sjames · · Score: 1

      MS set up the deal between themselves and the hardware vendors. Clearly long term support wasn't a priority.

      Linux has a different arrangement and makes it work.

    48. Re:Crusty Hardware by sjames · · Score: 1

      The real frustration of setting jumpers was that too many cards and drivers only had a couple options. You knew very well they could support any arbitrary IRQ but simply didn't do it.

      Plug'N'Pray was obnoxious since it rarely worked right (or at all) and often offered no manual fallback.

    49. Re:Crusty Hardware by lowen · · Score: 1

      At least one HP Proliant dual Pentium (Pentium I) had EISA. Some DEC AlphaServers had EISA.

    50. Re:Crusty Hardware by morgauxo · · Score: 1

      If you were on a budget and the upgrade to PCI had to come in stages that just meant you had a mixed system. Now you had plug and play PCI devices that couldn't understand why some resources were just not available since they were already taken by the old ISA hardware. That started to improve once BIOSs got smart enough to let you block off resources from the PnP pool.

    51. Re:Crusty Hardware by ArcadeMan · · Score: 3, Informative

      Things like scanners and printers shouldn't require special drivers in 2015. When we plug a keyboard or mouse into our computers, it just works because they're standard devices with standard drivers.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    52. Re:Crusty Hardware by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I had that problem once, and got solved by XP-mode in Windows 7

    53. Re:Crusty Hardware by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Wasn't EISA a substitute for ISA on servers, where presumably 32-bit instead of 16-bit buses were needed?

    54. Re:Crusty Hardware by qubezz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is also completely Microsoft's fault. In Vista they decided to kiss the ass of big media companies in order to play Blu-Ray content, which required encrypted end-to-end data transport, mandating the rewriting of the driver stack for everything from video and sound cards to imaging devices and audio mixing. They should have just given them the finger.

      What Microsoft didn't have to do was just completely discard gameport support. Microsoft blatantly removed the code to support 15 pin gameports from the OS. In Vista 32 bit, it could be partially put back by driver hacks of old dlls, but that hack was made impossible in win7. You could literally buy joysticks at the same CompUSA that would not work on the Vista shitboxes they were selling.

    55. Re:Crusty Hardware by allaunjsilverfox2 · · Score: 1

      Things like scanners and printers shouldn't require special drivers in 2015. When we plug a keyboard or mouse into our computers, it just works because they're standard devices with standard drivers.

      I would argue a LOT of the Wal-Mart specials don't run without driver support. And before you say, "Then don't buy from Wal-Mart!", Your conjecture is all printers should run without intervention. This is simply not the case. Big box stores provide brands that prefer you have vendor lock in. They can't force you to view the, BUY X BRAND INK NOW! ads without the bundled driver.

      --
      Restore the madness of youth's lechery
    56. Re:Crusty Hardware by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Exactly. There is no reason to replace hardware that works when the newer product will cost money and perform no better (and could even perform worse).

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    57. Re:Crusty Hardware by qubezz · · Score: 1

      I specified and owned an EISA system, a rare 486-50 (not double-clocked DX2), with 16MB memory, $4000 or so spent.

      EISA is a very odd beast, if you recall the original ISA bus that had jumpers you had to set on each card to non-conflicting IRQ, Address IO, and DMA values, then you will see the "brilliance" of EISA, which had a floppy disk config program for every card you bought to set the bus values. Seeing anyone that still has the matching and required EISA setup disks for their hardware is going to be the rare thing to find.

    58. Re:Crusty Hardware by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      I dumped the Computer Shopper white-box special for a DX2/80 with a decent ASUS board.

      Most white-box specials had biege cases during the era. Non-biege cases came much later. My very first PC-AT came in an green industrial case that bolted to the floor and weighed 80 pounds. That was a conversation piece.

    59. Re:Crusty Hardware by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

      I've watched my parents throw away perfectly good printer/scanner combos that were only a few years old because there were no drivers beyond XP.

      It's not so much printer/scanners as standalone scanners, it seems to be a requirement that a model of a scanner introduced during the heyday of a particular OS never gets updated drivers beyond that OS. Canon are particularly bad in this regard, if you look at your favourite online auction site you can find Canon scanners going by the trailerload because the only way to move to a new OS is to buy a new scanner (after carefully checking that its drivers work with the newer OS, which isn't guaranteed even with a brand-new scanner).The one notable exception to this is Epson, you can take a scanner you bought ten-plus years ago and download the latest Windows 8.1 drivers for it.

      In general, printer/scanner combos tend to be better-supported, but for standalone scanners it seems to be a variation of the printer-cartridge planned-obsolescence scam.

    60. Re:Crusty Hardware by maestroX · · Score: 2

      parallel still available, http://www.newegg.com/Product/... or try ebay.

    61. Re:Crusty Hardware by maestroX · · Score: 1

      I've watched my parents throw away perfectly good printer/scanner combos that were only a few years old because there were no drivers beyond XP.

      In Windows 7, run driver setup with compatibility settings to WinXP and as Administrator.
      This usually works.
      Or get VueScan http://www.hamrick.com/.

    62. Re:Crusty Hardware by Grog6 · · Score: 1

      With a "good" (lol) mobo, I was able to run my VLB board at 50MHz, with certain combinations of cards and memory.

      I ran a 486-DX4-100 for a couple of years with that mobo, a SCSI card, an Orchid Fahrenheit video card, with a 2x multiplier and a 50MHz fsb.

      I still have this somewhere, lol.

      It got replaced with a TX430 mobo, lol.

      --
      Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
    63. Re:Crusty Hardware by Grog6 · · Score: 1

      Yes, it was primarily for high bandwidth communications; SCSI, Fiber, etc.

      DataAq was secondary, but the cards I have have a 50pS jitter spec, and it holds across four cards in one box; try buying that for less than $20k today.

      The best cards I see these days won't hold that jitter spec; only systems.

      --
      Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
    64. Re:Crusty Hardware by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      This is one of the inherent problems of being closed source, support for niche and older hardware will be lacking.
      Microsoft have to break compatibility from time to time in order to progress, either due to hardware changes (64bit) or software changes (new video driver stack etc).

      The problem is that with closed drivers, only the original authors of those drivers can change them and hardware manufacturers have little or no incentive to continue supporting old hardware as they want to sell you new kit. With open source drivers, all it takes is for one of the users to either update it themselves, or hire someone capable of doing so. In some cases updates aren't even necessary, eg a lot of linux drivers written for 32bit x86 compile just fine on 64bit or even other architectures like ARM.

      The same is true of niche hardware, a lot of hardware was intended by the manufacturer to be connected to x86 systems but uses standard cross platform buses like pci or usb... While the number of people using linux on ppc, alpha, sparc or arm etc might be too low for the manufacturer to bother providing official support, the drivers will often just work. I used to run an alphastation on linux with all manner of pci and usb devices which were never intended to be used on alpha based hardware.

      --
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    65. Re:Crusty Hardware by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Well you get what you pay for when buying such devices...
      There are standards for printers, scanners and various other hardware. I wouldn't ever buy a printer which didn't support Postscript, and i never install the official drivers as they're often extremely bloated and probably full of ads. Sure printers which support postscript generally cost more, but they're usually higher quality, older ones are still available cheaply and the toner/ink is likely to remain available for far longer.

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      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    66. Re:Crusty Hardware by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      In Windows 7, run driver setup with compatibility settings to WinXP and as Administrator.
      This usually works.

      This usually doesn't work

      Or get VueScan http://www.hamrick.com/.

      they want $90 for slide scanning, or I can scan under Linux for free

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    67. Re:Crusty Hardware by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Half the time it didn't work! It would try to put things right on top of one another.

      Yeah, that was because ISA register sharing was supposed to be working by then, but it wasn't. PCI register sharing didn't even really work reliably until after PCI-E had already come out, it's pretty bulletproof now but it still caused awful performance degradation in the early days and having to force your SCSI card and your GPU onto different IRQs to get peak performance was definitely a thing.

      Even though things are great now I'm not entirely sure that decade of pain was worth it to get here.

      To be fair, the Macintosh has had working autoconfiguration for a very long time. The Amiga did, too.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    68. Re: Crusty Hardware by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The VLB card connector was really long and would sometimes make a poor connection or start to pop out.

      VLB controllers were often just garbage. There was really no point to having more than two VLB slots and little point to having more than one, as often you could get your storage controller or your video card working but not both.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    69. Re:Crusty Hardware by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      That's CMOS resetting, my bad. *cough*

      Some boards don't even have that, you have to pull a battery. But some boards actually have a flash enable jumper still, which is a pretty cool feature and a good thing to wire to a keyswitch or turbo button in a vintage case install.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    70. Re:Crusty Hardware by Ben+Hutchings · · Score: 1

      Debian accidentally dropped support for 486 by turning on kernel stack smashing protection, which uses RDTSC. This was done before Debian 6.0 (squeeze) but we only recently received a report that it failed to boot on a 486.

    71. Re:Crusty Hardware by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      My favorite back in 386 days was remapping the ANSI definitions when one of the other kids in my programming class wasn't looking so when he tried to press the backspace key it would print "DELETION DENIED!!!!!"

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    72. Re:Crusty Hardware by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Several years back, I had a network printer that was getting flaky, and would no longer talk to a computer by anything but Appletalk. This was about the time Apple was dropping it. Fortunately, I had a Linux box that could still use it.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    73. Re:Crusty Hardware by kjs3 · · Score: 1

      I've probably had ~1000 EISA machines pass new through my hands in the old days, but almost exclusively servers, and mostly Pentium. There were also a number of Alpha-based machines that used EISA, and the HP 9000 HP-PA-based machines used it. I *think* I've seen a MIPS-based EISA machine from back when we thought we'd be running WinNT on MIPS. Good times. For a relatively short period of time, it was extremely popular at the high end. It was never really direct competition for VL-Bus, which was more "we need more bandwidth for consumer level video and PCI isn't here yet" than "new bus arch for high performance computing". I don't have one now, but did within the last 5 years. FWIW...EISA is why PCI isn't as closed and license heavy as MCA.

    74. Re:Crusty Hardware by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Well, at least you don't have to deal with licensing issues. Microsoft won't sell you a license for older versions of Windows (such as XP) so you're stuck dealing with old hardware so you can use the license that's attached to it.

    75. Re:Crusty Hardware by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Actually, you would probably need SP2 and likely SP3. Support for pre-SP2 is pretty spotty nowadays, and a lot of stuff expects SP3. Also, I would stay well away from Flash or Java since that's the most likely way you'll get pwn3d even if you decided to use IE anyway.

  2. The end of an era. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Linus Torvalds was friendly about the case"

    They did it, they neutered him.

    1. Re:The end of an era. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Linus Torvalds was friendly about the case"

      They did it, they neutered him.

      Torvalds is in general very reasonable. It's just when people push him with unreasonable requests that he bites back hard.
      Like when that guy wanted the kernel to be ported to C++ for no other reason than object orientation being the fad of the year.
      That was hilarious.

    2. Re:The end of an era. by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They did it, they neutered him.

      Bullshit. He's harsh on coders who fuck up (and rightfully so), but I have never seen him unleash the Kraken on any reasonable user request.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    3. Re:The end of an era. by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Godamn Kraken, all I want is to reach Selbina in peace.

      And when it's not a Kraken it's godamn sea pirates with skeletons.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    4. Re: The end of an era. by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      I miss my cute little Mithra. :(

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    5. Re:The end of an era. by ZorinLynx · · Score: 1

      They're referring to the recent drama where Social Justice Warriors are pissed at Linus because he said he "didn't care about diversity."

      What he meant is that he doesn't care who the code comes from, just that it's good code. Which is the right way to do things.

    6. Re:The end of an era. by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Engineering is in general gender/race/whatever-neutral. For code, it is possible to judge the merit of it without even knowing who or what produced it. That gives any good engineer a high-level of BS resilience and Linus is just one that acts it out on those trying to feed him BS. Nothing wrong with that, his work has merit in spades, he is able to communicate well and he has no problems recognizing and appreciating good work by others. It is really not hard to see why his pet-project became huge.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    7. Re:The end of an era. by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      Also, he doesn't get salty until they've refused to fix or even acknowledge their error multiple times. It's mostly a third-strike thing.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    8. Re:The end of an era. by rdnetto · · Score: 1

      There is quite a bit of object oriented C code in the wild, that request just shows that the guy had no idea what he was talking about. While there are a lot of nice (and not so nice) things you can get from C++ if object orientation is all you want its overkill.

      Amusingly, the kernel is probably one of the better examples of how to do OOP in C - the VFS code is a good example of this. (The file_operations struct is basically a vtable.) So given that they already had a working solution, they wouldn't have gained anything from C++ except additional complexity.

      --
      Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
  3. FDDI? by Virtucon · · Score: 1

    1Gbps and 10Gbps SFP+ cards are cheap. Upgrade Now!

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    1. Re:FDDI? by kjs3 · · Score: 1

      I've still got a little bit of FDDI, as it's the only 100Mb tech for things VAXen and older Sun. But I suppose that kinda proves the point of "leave old crusty tech behind".

    2. Re:FDDI? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Somehow you seem to have missed the part where that was not a sane option....

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    3. Re: FDDI? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      This is old, but not crap. Equating "old" and "crap" just shows that you have no clue about competent engineering.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  4. Re:Overhead? by CimmerianX · · Score: 2

    Well that's the point. He's basically saying "It's no skin of our backs" to keep it supported, so he does.

    I think that's kinda awesome where 1 guy says he still need it supported and it stays.

  5. Damn it, this ruins my plans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I was planning on using the lack of EISA support going forward to force an upgrade past the boss.

    Now what excuse will I use with my wife? Somebody think of something or I'll have to deflate her!

  6. Re:What a cheap fucker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Yeah and how reliable is that $20 PCI card compared to what they are currently running?

    You generally do not replace a proven reliable system "just because".

  7. Re:Which is fair by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    By a strange coincidence “None at all” is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was, in fact, from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. Arthur Dent's failure to suspect this reflects the care with which his friend blended himself into human society - after a fairly shaky start. When he first arrived fifteen years ago, the minimal research he had done had suggested to him that the name ‘Ford Prefect' would be nicely inconspicuous. He will enter our story in thirty-five seconds and say “Hello, Arthur.” The ape-descendant will greet him in return, but in deference to a million years of evolution, he will not attempt to pick fleas off him; Earthmen are not proud of their ancestors and never invite them round to dinner.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  8. Re:What a cheap fucker by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    How much time is spent maintaining this 20 year old code?

    None at all.

    "So if we actually have a user, and it works, then no, we're not removing EISA support. It's not like it hurts us or is in some way fundamentally broken." - Linus Torvalds

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  9. Re:Which is fair by tnk1 · · Score: 1

    If I've been using a piece of hardware from the 1980s and it still works perfectly for me, and it costs little or nothing at all to maintain it in the current kernel, I don't see why you wouldn't.

    At some point, there will be a reckoning where they have to make a big change and the EISA stuff will not be reasonable to maintain any more. Until then, there's no reason to remove it just for the sake of "it's old". I presume once that point comes, Linus will ruthlessly shut down anyone who wants to keep it.

  10. Old hardware / technology never dies,... by rstanley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It just gets renewed, reused, and recycled, not only in more wealthy Western countries, and Third World countries, but by poorer people all over the world. (Hopefully with Linux and other FLOSS software installed!) There was an article in Slashdot in 2013 about an IBM 402 with punch cards, still in use!!! (I wonder if it could run Linux?) ;^)

    But seriously, even though most of us are using computer less than 5 years old, a lot of old computers are still in use. What about 16 bit embedded systems, many running Linux! I have to agree with Linus, if the old technology in the kernel, does not adversely affect newer technologies, and people are still using it, then there is a legitimate reason for leaving it in the kernel. I trust his opinion.

    IMHO, I think the FLOSS community has an obligation to continue to support older hardware & technologies that certain other proprietary O/S manufactures have long ago abandoned. Isn't that one of the reasons the Free Software and Open Source Software communities, and software were created in the first place?

    1. Re:Old hardware / technology never dies,... by rstanley · · Score: 1

      ELKS:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

      http://elks.sourceforge.net/in...

      Linux should be scalable to any processor.

  11. Re:What a cheap fucker by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

    You generally do not replace a proven reliable system "just because".

    So why is it reasonable for this user insist on running a trunk kernel, instead of an old branch that only gets security updates?

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  12. Re:What a cheap fucker by geert · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because he's the maintainer.

    http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/MAINTAINERS#n2998

    DEFXX FDDI NETWORK DRIVER
    M: "Maciej W. Rozycki"
    S: Maintained
    F: drivers/net/fddi/defxx.*

    He's supposed to run the latest kernel, and keep this driver working...

  13. In the real world, installed base 'just works". by DutchUncle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is obvious that nobody would install a brand new system with such old technology. It should be equally obvious, though, that just as one expects old buildings to "just stay up" (with a little maintenance), there are plenty of old technology systems still up and running just fine for whatever they do. Lots of people in big cities have 75-year-old telephone wiring which works fine for what it always did (though it can't handle DSL), and the same thing will happen to the brandy-newest fiber optic cable when someone comes up with an LED laser frequency that needs a different glass with different chromatic aberration. There are lots of industrial and scientific devices out there that never got updated drivers past (whatever release of whatever system), and they cost a lot of money at the time, and they still work. (Though I admit that, while they may be worth maintaining, at some point one has to give up on trying to update them.)

  14. What about ISA? by morgauxo · · Score: 2

    I was assuming that EISA was just a special case inside of the same code as ISA and that what was proposed was to remove all ISA support. Is that what was going to happen?

    ISA is old but I am sure there is quite a bit more than just one person out there with some sort of legacy hardware using it. I have a little bit of ISA hardware myself that I would like to use but not quite enough to build up a legacy PC. Every now and then I search the internet for ISA to USB adapters. There actually IS one company selling such a beast but it is way to expensive to be worthwile for me. But.. if I had some expensive piece of lab equipment or something like that with a proprietary ISA adapter... it would make sense.

    1. Re:What about ISA? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      I was assuming that EISA was just a special case inside of the same code as ISA and that what was proposed was to remove all ISA support. Is that what was going to happen?

      I doubt it. ISA buses are still present even in some modern hardware, even when they're not exposed. It's less common these days than it used to be, but it's not over.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:What about ISA? by gweihir · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You can also get them easily on industrial PCs. One reason is that there are quite a few custom interface cards based on ISA around, as it is so easy to interface with it. The other thing is that there are cards around that have quite a bit of remaining lifetime and would be expensive and problematic on software-side to replace adequately.

      For example, PC104 is ISA with a different connector and it is far from dead.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    3. Re:What about ISA? by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      About every PC still emulates ISA and even if you don't use the legacy I/O such as PS/2 you need it at least to store BIOS setting (not sure what UEFI motherboards do), or even for that hated Trusted Platform Module!

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

    4. Re:What about ISA? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      From a software perspective what sets memory/IO mapped busses apart from each other is how the OS reads and/or sets their configuration, not what they are like on an electrical level. ISA was either manually configured or (later) used a hacked on plug and play mechanism. EISA had it's own configuration system.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    5. Re:What about ISA? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Indeed. "Simple and works" beats "shiny and new" every time in competently done engineering.

      I think part of this "throw it away because it is old" mindset is from people that do not understand that many things are a mature and fine solution for a specific problem-set. This seems to be a mixture of incompetence and a misguided belief in perpetual advancement in all things electronic.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  15. Re:Which is fair by morgauxo · · Score: 1

    I remember reading (back in Pentium I days) that NASA still used 386s for a lot of things that went into space. The larger transistors inside made the chip more radiation resistant.

    I wonder if they ever found a way to make modern processors more radiation resistant or if they just added more shielding or maybe even still use the old stuff...

  16. Re:Which is fair by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There is really no reason you need kernel 3.x 1980s hardware x86 HW. None at all.

    Have you actually enumerated the individual computing needs of a hundred million people? It's a big world out there, and tunnel vision biases will cripple you.

  17. Re: What a cheap fucker by Shimbo · · Score: 2

    Maybe, but I would hazard a guess that where this old tech is being used at all is likely to be in a resource poor environment.

    Alternatively, one with long term support requirements and onerous change control: e.g. military, nuclear, medical.

  18. Learn, Mozilla! by fraxinus-tree · · Score: 1

    In unrelated news, Mozilla cuts off digital signatures. Even if they have millions of users.

  19. NI A-2000's... by Grog6 · · Score: 1

    I have a bunch of these, and some top of th line IBM servers (c1991) to run them.

    They are better than everything newer except the Aquaris... :)

    --
    Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
  20. MCA removal by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    recent years have also seen MCA bus support being removed from the kernel

    Just for reference, here's also the original discussion on MCA support removal from 2012 in LKML.

    1. Re:MCA removal by myrrdyn · · Score: 2

      Just for reference, Linus' reply to that:
      "Maybe we could some day remove EISA support too.."
      https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/5/1...

      --
      Elen sìla lùmenn' omentielvo
  21. Re:EISA? by ledow · · Score: 2

    Get off our lawn.

  22. The thing I remember about EISA? by m.dillon · · Score: 1

    I remember that every time I changed a card out the machine took 30 minutes to reconfigure itself, because some doochebag of a programmer wrote the #$%#$% configurator that all the vendors used. An operation that could have been done in 5 seconds if written properly. That was the first ... and last EISA machine I ever bought.

    -Matt

  23. Working with state agencies in the '90s by aussersterne · · Score: 1

    I saw a lot of EISA systems. It was a reasonable performer and physically robust (not as sensitive as PCI cards to positioning in slots, etc.). I'd say that EISA hardware was generally of very good quality, but high-end enough that most consumers wouldn't run into it despite being a commodity standard, sort of like PCI-X.

    The systems I had experience with were running Linux, even then. :-)

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
  24. Re:What a cheap fucker by MightyYar · · Score: 1

    Didn't your momma teach you not to pick scabs?

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  25. recommend moving EISA suport to systemd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    perfect for a small, optional, add-on to systemd that you dont have to use if you dont want

  26. DVB cards by phorm · · Score: 1

    I've got a bunch of PCI DVB/capture cards that are in the same boat. They *could* be useful if I had drivers for them, but alas, they do not.

    My personal disfavorite is software that depends on dongles which have OS-specific drivers. The software *WOULD* work on the newer OS if the dongle had a driver that allowed it to authenticate (of course, dongles suck in general).

    1. Re:DVB cards by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      What is likely to work however, is a cracked version of that software.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  27. Thank you, Linus! by MagickalMyst · · Score: 2

    It's nice to see that Linux is still being developed by the people, for the people.

    --
    Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
  28. OFFTOPIC: Re:Learn, Mozilla! by higuita · · Score: 1

    You really don't want CA that aren't trusted in your browser... even if it breaks some sites... a broken CA can break ALL your https sites

    We should have killed SSL3 years ago, but to avoid breaking some sites, we found later that SSL3 bug could break all sites, even if they had already TLS1.2
    When something should die, let it die or you will pay for it later

    --
    Higuita
    1. Re:OFFTOPIC: Re:Learn, Mozilla! by fraxinus-tree · · Score: 1

      Well, I meant crypto.signText.

  29. Re:What a cheap fucker by sjames · · Score: 1

    Probably not much time at all, if any.

    It's just along for the ride now. Total economics fail would be spending time ripping it out.

    Note that the '386 code was demanding actual effort to maintain so it's gone.

  30. Re: What a cheap fucker by gweihir · · Score: 1

    And maybe the users of these cards just have very high reliability needs and do not want to buy a new card that has a 10% chance to crap out in the first year. There may be a lot of other valid reasons. "New" does not imply "good". And if it works, do not break it.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  31. Re:Which is fair by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    There is really no reason you need kernel 3.x 1980s hardware x86 HW. None at all.

    I found it sad to lose 386 support because there are a bunch of cheap embedded boards with 386s on them still floating around out there. But not sad enough to do anything about it... Regardless, if I can't have a modern kernel on something then I mostly won't mess with it. It's just easier to not have to think your way around multiple versions.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  32. EISA in NT RISC workstations by unixisc · · Score: 1

    EISA was also used in the earliest RISC workstations that supported Windows NT 3.1. There was the MIPS Magnum R4000, and the DECpc AXP 150, both of which had EISA buses for NT, and equivalent Turbochannel based workstations for UNIX (Irix/RISC-OS for the Magnum R3000 and Ultrix for the DEC 3000 AXP). MIPS abandoned the model after its foray into the NT market ended quickly, while DEC replaced both the above models w/ the PCI based AlphaStations and AlphaServers.

  33. parallel still available by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

    You have many motherboards options with latest gen hardware and a parallel port, still.
    That may work if your software is so backwards it needs to think the parallel port is attached to the ISA bus.

    http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel...
    http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A...
    http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel...

  34. Re: Which is fair by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 1

    Hello, Arthur.

    --
    Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  35. Linux for the .... middle? by taikedz · · Score: 1

    So two thoughts come to me after reading the summary and the comments

    1/ This clearly demonstrates that Linux is the right technology to use when supporting business syetms with legacy hardware (I'll second the opinions that enterprise keeps hardware around the longest - I supported users on obsolete AS/400s which, whilst not as old as what some people here talk about, still mean we're frequently learning old technology in Support); and the point that the leadership (Linus right now, hopefully the same with whomever comes to replace him eventually!) can be more ameanable to keeping up support for old hardware is great. I dream of desktop uptake, but enterprise and research are where it's at.

    2/ However I also wonder - isn't this an offshoot problem of the fact that Linux is a monolothic kernel? Can this kind of interface-specific support not be modularized? Say, an API/ABI (in-kernel)standard that allows the kernel to plough on with currently evolving requirements, whilst maintaining a stable interface for previously integrated kernel features that have been split off into modules...?

    (and no, I'm not at all familiar with the ins and outs of kernel development and architecture - I just read newsposts and Wikipedia ...)

    --
    -- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
  36. PC104 ? by dargaud · · Score: 1

    Isn't EISA (or ISA) still used on CURRENT industrial embedded systems like PC104 ? I'll soon know, I've just been asked to work on some... In that case it's very good if a modern kernel can support it.

    --
    Non-Linux Penguins ?
  37. Re:Which is fair by davydagger · · Score: 1

    yes. At the same time, the real question is, why do you use a modern kernel? If you have hardware from the 1980s, why can't you also use software from the 1980s?

  38. Re:Which is fair by davydagger · · Score: 1

    they still do actually(I think they are up to p1/p2 era for space). That said, a modern Linux kernel is not really the optimal choice, try something like an embedded OS.

  39. Good to see by chris_clay · · Score: 1

    It's good to know that the developers are listening to the community. Not sure how this particular user knew of EISA support being dropped but good that we can make sure the Linux kernel and GNU/Linux operating system survives as community-driven software which will always outdo proprietary software where it is driven by a single company's wishes. GNU/Linux is excellent at supporting new and old hardware and retaining backwards compatibility. Thanks again to all of the developers and for making GNU/Linux such a huge success.