Time to retire PC Card (but not CardBus)

[Julian H. Stacey]

Hi, Reference:
> From:		Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com>
> Date:		Thu, 23 May 2019 18:34:46 -0600

Warner Losh wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> Now that a number of 16-bit drivers have been retired, I think it's time to
> retire 16-bit PC Card / PCMCIA cards. The 32-bit CardBus cards are still
> alive and kicking, but the need for 16-bit PC Cards has passed. It's time
> to retire it.
> 
> I've floated this idea before, and there was broad support for it. I've
> held off until after FCP 101 deprecation was playing out. We've not pushed
> that into the tree. This is the logical next step. FreeBSD 12.x will be the
> last release with 16-bit PC Card support.
> 
> My plan is to add deprecation notices to the remaining PC Card drivers,
> merge those back to FreeBSD 11 and 12. Once that's done, I plan on removing
> the 16-bit support. I have a few minor bug fixes to that which I'll push in
> before I retire it, and merge those fixes.
> 
> My plan is to give about a month for the community to discuss this plan

Which community, which lists ? announce@ maybe ?  Some sysadmins
dont have time to read lists developers use, but they provide freebsd
in the real world.  I've met busy sysadmins who have little time
for any mail lists, maybe just for mutiple OS's versions of RELNOTES
& announce at .


> before I add the warnings. If there's resistance, we'll go with more formal
> data collection and deprecation. If there's none, I'll go ahead.

Purges always scare, cutting off our tails, wondering how many we
loose & don't hear from Versus how much easier it might make
development for others.

> This affects the following drivers: an, cmx, fdc, puc, uart, wi, bt3c, ata.
> 
> Warner

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey, Consultant Systems Engineer, BSD Linux Unix, Munich Aachen Kent
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