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Open Source Operating Systems Hardware Linux

User Plea Means EISA Support Not Removed From Linux 189

Posted by timothy 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.
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User Plea Means EISA Support Not Removed From Linux More

User Plea Means EISA Support Not Removed From Linux

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  • Crusty Hardware (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:16AM (#48875161)

    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.

    • Re:Crusty Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:22AM (#48875223) Journal

      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.

      • Re:Crusty Hardware (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:30AM (#48875301)

        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.

        • 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.)

          • 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.

            • Re:Crusty Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @12:18PM (#48875869) Journal

              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.

            • Re:Crusty Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

              by morgauxo ( 974071 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @12:30PM (#48876021)

              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 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.

                • 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

                  • Re:Crusty Hardware (Score:4, Informative)

                    by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @03:45PM (#48878509)

                    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.

                    • 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.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

                      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.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by sjames ( 1099 )

                  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.

                • Re:Crusty Hardware (Score:5, Interesting)

                  by qubezz ( 520511 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @03:52PM (#48878575)

                  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.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Bert64 ( 520050 )

                  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 op

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

              • 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 w

              • 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/ [hamrick.com].

            • Re:Crusty Hardware (Score:4, Insightful)

              by armanox ( 826486 ) <asherewindknight@yahoo.com> on Thursday January 22, 2015 @01:45PM (#48876819) Homepage Journal
              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)

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by hughbar ( 579555 )
        This way, sanity lies too, the resource cost of manufacturing new PC is enormous: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org] 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.

        • 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.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hughbar ( 579555 )
            Yes, agree, but the problem also with XP is end-of-life. Shame because it was one of their best ones too!

            • 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 w

    • 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.

    • 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.

      • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by satsuke ( 263225 )

          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.

          • 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?

            • 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...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          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

          • 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. :)

        • Re:Crusty Hardware (Score:5, Interesting)

          by morgauxo ( 974071 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @12:17PM (#48875857)

          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.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jandrese ( 485 )
            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.

            • 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.

          • 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. )

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            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.

      • 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... :)

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

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Grog6 ( 85859 )

          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.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:45AM (#48875479)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • 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 a
          • 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.

    • "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 use

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      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.

    • 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 aro

    • 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. :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jcdr ( 178250 )

      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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lowen ( 10529 )

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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by qubezz ( 520511 )

      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 th

  • The end of an era. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:17AM (#48875163)

    "Linus Torvalds was friendly about the case"

    They did it, they neutered him.

    • Re:The end of an era. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:21AM (#48875209)

      "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.

    • Re:The end of an era. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:23AM (#48875231) Journal

      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.

      • 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.

      • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          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.

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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kjs3 ( 601225 )
      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".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

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

  • Old hardware / technology never dies,... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rstanley ( 758673 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:50AM (#48875523)

    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 [slashdot.org] 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?

  • In the real world, installed base 'just works". (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DutchUncle ( 826473 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @12:21PM (#48875907)
    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.)

  • What about ISA? (Score:3)

    by morgauxo ( 974071 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @12:23PM (#48875929)

    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.

    • 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.

      • Re:What about ISA? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday January 22, 2015 @05:50PM (#48879683)

        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.

  • 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 [lkml.org] from 2012 in LKML.

  • 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

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

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