Re: possible deprecation and removal of some old QEMU Arm machine types (pxa2xx, omap, sa1110)

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024, at 09:31, Andreas Kemnade wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Feb 2024 23:42:58 +0100
> "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 14, 2024, at 13:26, Dmitry Baryshkov wrote:
>> > On Tue, 13 Feb 2024 at 23:22, Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org> 
>> > wrote:  
>> >> On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 9:12 PM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:  
>> >> > On Tue, Feb 13, 2024, at 16:36, Guenter Roeck wrote:  
>> >> > > On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 03:14:21PM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote:  
>> >>
>> >> Andrea Adami and Dmitry Eremin-Solenikov did the work in 2017 to
>> >> modernize it a bit, and Russell helped out. I was under the impression
>> >> that they only used real hardware though!  
>> >
>> > I used both Qemu and actual hardware (having collie, poodle, tosa and
>> > c860 that was easy).
>> >
>> > The biggest issue with Zaurus PDAs was that supporting interesting
>> > parts of the platform (PCMCIA, companion chips) required almost
>> > rebootstrapping of the corresponding drivers.
>> > E.g. I had a separate driver for the LoCoMo chip which worked properly
>> > with the DT systems.
>> > PCMCIA was a huuuge trouble and it didn't play well at all. The driver
>> > must be rewritten to use the component framework.  
>> 
>> If we want to actually go there, I think the best option for PCMCIA
>> support is likely to replace the entire "soc_common" pcmcia driver
>> with a simple drivers/pata/ storage driver and no support for
>> other cards. There was a driver until commit 38943cbd25a2
>> ("ata: remove palmld pata driver") that could serve as an
>> template.
>> 
> hmm, main usage for PCMCIA/CF in those devices was often something else,
> not storage, at least on the IPAQ h2200. Wondering wether that road is
> actually good. When I was mainly using those devices, I was not good in
> mainlining things.

Do we still support any non-storage CF devices that someone might
actually use? Do you have a specific example in mind? These are
the currently supported devices that I see:

git grep -B4 -w depends.*PCMCIA | grep "Kconfig-\(config\|menuconfig\)" | grep 
-v ^drivers/pcmcia
drivers/ata/Kconfig-config PATA_PCMCIA
drivers/bluetooth/Kconfig-config BT_HCIDTL1
drivers/bluetooth/Kconfig-config BT_HCIBT3C
drivers/bluetooth/Kconfig-config BT_HCIBLUECARD
drivers/comedi/Kconfig-menuconfig COMEDI_PCMCIA_DRIVERS
drivers/mmc/host/Kconfig-config MMC_SDRICOH_CS
drivers/mtd/maps/Kconfig-config MTD_PCMCIA
drivers/mtd/maps/Kconfig-config MTD_PCMCIA_ANONYMOUS
drivers/net/arcnet/Kconfig-menuconfig ARCNET
drivers/net/arcnet/Kconfig-config ARCNET_COM20020_CS
drivers/net/can/sja1000/Kconfig-config CAN_EMS_PCMCIA
drivers/net/can/sja1000/Kconfig-config CAN_PEAK_PCMCIA
drivers/net/can/softing/Kconfig-config CAN_SOFTING_CS
drivers/net/ethernet/3com/Kconfig-config NET_VENDOR_3COM
drivers/net/ethernet/3com/Kconfig-config PCMCIA_3C574
drivers/net/ethernet/3com/Kconfig-config PCMCIA_3C589
drivers/net/ethernet/8390/Kconfig-config PCMCIA_AXNET
drivers/net/ethernet/8390/Kconfig-config APNE
drivers/net/ethernet/8390/Kconfig-config PCMCIA_PCNET
drivers/net/ethernet/amd/Kconfig-config PCMCIA_NMCLAN
drivers/net/ethernet/fujitsu/Kconfig-config NET_VENDOR_FUJITSU
drivers/net/ethernet/fujitsu/Kconfig-config PCMCIA_FMVJ18X
drivers/net/ethernet/smsc/Kconfig-config PCMCIA_SMC91C92
drivers/net/ethernet/xircom/Kconfig-config NET_VENDOR_XIRCOM
drivers/net/ethernet/xircom/Kconfig-config PCMCIA_XIRC2PS
drivers/parport/Kconfig-config PARPORT_PC_PCMCIA
drivers/scsi/pcmcia/Kconfig-menuconfig SCSI_LOWLEVEL_PCMCIA
drivers/ssb/Kconfig-config SSB_PCMCIAHOST_POSSIBLE
drivers/tty/Kconfig-config IPWIRELESS
drivers/tty/serial/8250/Kconfig-config SERIAL_8250_CS
drivers/usb/host/Kconfig-config USB_SL811_CS
sound/pcmcia/Kconfig-menuconfig SND_PCMCIA

     Arnd