Subject: Re: [RFC 0/6] pcmcia: separate 16-bit support from cardbus

From: "Russell King (Oracle)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2023 20:15:40 +0000

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 02:34:51PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> I don't expect this to be a problem normal laptop support, as the last
> PC models that predate Cardbus support (e.g. 1997 ThinkPad 380ED) are
> all limited to i586MMX CPUs and 80MB of RAM. This is barely enough to
> boot Tiny Core Linux but not a regular distro.

Am I understanding that the argument you're putting forward here is
"cardbus started in year X, so from year X we can ignore 16-bit
PCMCIA support" ?

Given that PCMCIA support has been present in x86 hardware at least
up to 2010, I don't see how that is any basis for making a decision
about 16-bit PCMCIA support.

Isn't the relevant factor here whether 16-bit PCMCIA cards are still
in use on hardware that can run a modern distro? (And yes, x86
machines that have 16-bit PCMCIA can still run Debian Stable today.)

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