Hello dear list, I'm new to the party, so please bear with my with stupid questions and infractions on policy or anything else - I'm willing to learn, and am receptive to change, please just poke me if needed :) Replying to a somewhat older (but not too old) mail: On Fri, 21 Dec 2018, Michael Schmitz wrote:
+if APNE +config APNE100MBIT + bool "PCMCIA NE2000 100MBit support" + default n + depends on NE2000=n && PCMCIA_AXNET=n + depends on PCMCIA_PCNET=n && STNIC=n && ULTRA=n && WD80x3=n In all honesty, I doubt anyone could ever use the stnic, ultra and wd drivers on m68k (Geert?) so these could be omitted as well. Not sure pcnet_cs or axnet_cs are possible to use on the Amiga PCMCIA slot, so all that remains in practice is the ne driver (which is used on Atari).
what is the underlying problem here anyway? Looking at http://www.g-mb.de/pcmcia_e.html, there are quite a few cards supported by cnet.device under AmigaOS, and seem to be working well. I've got an Apollo RE450CT (at least I think it is - FCC ID: MQ4EC2T) which works just fine under AmigaOS, but isn't detected by apne.ko at all - the AmigaOS driver has had the last change to it in August 2007. One very common card amongst AmigaOS developers with PCMCIA seems to be the 3Com Etherlink III (3c589), which seems have had a sufficient driver update in February 2010. So, the situation is "ok" under AmigaOS ... but Linux support isn't there. Looking at various forums and mailing lists, people willing to use (or at least try) to try Linux on an A1200 or A600 seems to fail at this stage on a regular basis, and some report rather desperate searches for supported PCMCIA cards on various sites where people trade this kind of stuff - usually, to no success. If I look at the amount of people who do report success, consider the amount of people who talk about this issue at all, and then wildly guess how many people might have tried and failed and not said a thing, I think there might be a quite reasonable userbase unlockable by improving support for PCMCIA cards. The A1200 and A600 are small and sweet boxes, and companies like Individual Computer are still building accelerators that make them quite usable for surprising amount of tasks. Individual Computers also created the RapidRoad extension, which adds USB support - and AmigaOS software support is also surprisingly good. I added a Mouse and a Keyboard and they "just worked", same as a USB network device (ASIX AX88772), which also "just works". I'd like to work on support for RapidRoad (shouldn't be too much work, it uses a ST-Ericsson's isp1763 for which Android support already exists (although probably not for the 8-bit mode it uses), and supporting it when connected to an X-Surf should afterwards also be possible, if I read http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/RapidRoad correct ... ... but, all of this is no fun at all without network support under Linux :( .. I'll order a GuruNet/Plipbox style device and shall see how that helps me, but ... What needs to happen for stable, reliable support for existing PCMCIA network cards people already have? How can we unblock those possible Linux users? cheers from Berlin, count
