LANCE ethernet chip - ~24 drivers
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./drivers/net/sunlance.cNCR92c990`-> Father of declance.c as I think
It handles 79c90, but also includes support for ledma, lebuffer, and Lance-fixed-with-PAL. Hardly a target for merge.
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./drivers/net/sunhme.cnone mentioned`-> *some* cards seem to be compatible?!
Nope, not even close. Make it 23 Lance drivers.
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./drivers/net/sunqu.c"looks like LANCE"
QE is a quad of some Lance derivatives, plus a bus interface for DMA which is not compatible with ledma. It is sufficiently unusual for Solaris to have separate drivers for le and qe.
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./drivers/net/sun3lance.cnone mentioned,
but adopted fromsunlance.c
Yes, they are basically the same. Dunno why sun3 people split it.
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However - having
more than 20 drivers for one kind of device sucks a lot.
Not really, as long as they are maintained.
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I think, it will be a 2.5.x thing to
re-unify them again (at lease, write a central implementation for the chip and let bus specific drivers use it). Just the same words are to be said for the Zilog8530 serial chip.
Large number of them is going to die fromm bitrot naturally, so I do not see a major problem. For instance, sunle is going to disappear in 5..10 years, as old machines break down.
-- Pete