The OpenBSD maintainers are heroes for keeping hardware like this running. This is about the time Greg KH might say "yeah, there are like five of these left, zero in actual production, and the code to support them is gumming up the LLMs. I'm just going to take it out of the kernel."
I'd more bet that they are the critical infrastructure pillar everyone is scared to replace in a super important system, lol.
Maybe one of it saves the earth rotation control algorithm which the Earth Rotation Service requires for shooting their hidden ion cannons to keep it spinning.
Very True, and one thing people forget, we need to keep the ability to read these old devices.
I was a operator (now admin) on a few minis in the early 80s that had these drives. The drive pack on the ones we had were removable and we used 256MB packs.
We would backup data from one drive to another on third shift, at the same time to reel tapes. The reel tapes back then where used for long term backup off site, the drives for short term on site. But who knows how many of these packs are out there just sitting around waiting to be read :)
Do we really need the latest kernel on them, though? As in, is it worth it?
In 100 years, if we need to run kernel 6.12 to use a 3c509, is that all that bad? It's not like being "stuck" on an old IRIX without the proprietary dev CD where you have a catch 22 problem.
An old system version that's completely open is whatever the sysadmin version of "turning complete".
Sure, port the open system to the hardware that does not have an open system. But I question the value of keeping it up to date.
All else being equal, sure it'd be cool. But all else is not equal. So yes, ripping out old code is the right move for Linux, in my opinion.
The other open question is, will there still be operational 3c509s 100 years from now?
Another way I put it, with a heavy sigh, is: "There will come a day—and odds are, it's not far off now—when the last working real Amiga will stop working for the last time."
Comments
The OpenBSD maintainers are heroes for keeping hardware like this running. This is about the time Greg KH might say "yeah, there are like five of these left, zero in actual production, and the code to support them is gumming up the LLMs. I'm just going to take it out of the kernel."
I'd more bet that they are the critical infrastructure pillar everyone is scared to replace in a super important system, lol.
Maybe one of it saves the earth rotation control algorithm which the Earth Rotation Service requires for shooting their hidden ion cannons to keep it spinning.
Very True, and one thing people forget, we need to keep the ability to read these old devices.
I was a operator (now admin) on a few minis in the early 80s that had these drives. The drive pack on the ones we had were removable and we used 256MB packs.
We would backup data from one drive to another on third shift, at the same time to reel tapes. The reel tapes back then where used for long term backup off site, the drives for short term on site. But who knows how many of these packs are out there just sitting around waiting to be read :)
Do we really need the latest kernel on them, though? As in, is it worth it?
In 100 years, if we need to run kernel 6.12 to use a 3c509, is that all that bad? It's not like being "stuck" on an old IRIX without the proprietary dev CD where you have a catch 22 problem.
An old system version that's completely open is whatever the sysadmin version of "turning complete".
Sure, port the open system to the hardware that does not have an open system. But I question the value of keeping it up to date.
All else being equal, sure it'd be cool. But all else is not equal. So yes, ripping out old code is the right move for Linux, in my opinion.
I'd prefer a 3c905B-TX, because PCI. And because I have written a driver for it, on my own, to reverse engineer it, about 30+ years ago :-)
The other open question is, will there still be operational 3c509s 100 years from now?
Another way I put it, with a heavy sigh, is: "There will come a day—and odds are, it's not far off now—when the last working real Amiga will stop working for the last time."
Ouch.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2026/8/3/1312