Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next] drivers/net: delete old 8bit ISA 3c501 driver.

From: Alan Cox <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 19:46:59 +0100

> Probing for non-pnp ISA cards is definitely unreliable.
> Maybe some of these drivers should need to be explicitly
> enabled in the kernel config.

The config is set by the distributions, not always cluefully. Non PnP
ISA drivers won't autoload either as they have nothing to key off.

> I hadn't realised how bad some of the 3cxxx cards were!

The 3c500/01 were the first PC ethernet card ever so very very old.

> I thought the 'parallel tasking' was all about starting
> to tx a frame while the host was still copting it to the
> tx fifo (and rx copies before end of frame), not that

It was.

Alan