Re: Proposal to remove Token Ring support

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> As the owner of a Token Ring interface board (perhaps with a built
>> in MAU??) I don't mind at all.
> A MAU, Media Access Unit, is the Token Ring equivalent of a hub.
> There is no such thing as a Token Ring interface board with a
> built-in MAU.

Why not?  There are Ethernet cards with built-in hubs.  (Not lots of
them, but they exist.)  I don't know of any examples - I barely know of
Token Ring at all - but for none at all to exist would surprise me.

> They are physically quite large (there is a Token Ring MAU sitting
> about five feet to my right at this moment)

Time was, you couldn't run Ethernet without multiple metres of heavy
cable the size of my thumb.  Then thinnet, then twisted pair; today,
Ethernet switches fit on chips smaller than the cross-section of
thicknet cable.

Not that I'm going to suggest MAU technology has tracked Ethernet
switch technology.  But I feel moderately sure a MAU could fit on a
small FPGA plus whatever surrounding analog electronics are necessary
to interface to the physical layer, if anyone cared to bother.

> While I think it would be sad to lose this interesting technology, I
> can't commit to do the maintenance especially since I'm not very
> famalier with the network stack.

I wouldn't worry too much.  Modern NetBSD may no longer be a system for
obsolete computers, but older NetBSD is; it still exists, and will as
long as anyone bothers to keep copies of it around.  Losing Token Ring
support in -current would give me a slight feeling of "sic transit
gloria mundi", but nothing worse, since it's still there in the
historical versions anyone using ISA, PCMCIA, SBus, etc, are likely
running anyway.

> I do however have the equipment to test it.  [...]  I also have an
> SBus Token Ring interface.  I'm not aware of any drivers for it.
> However, plain PCI and SBus are also obsolete technologies.

Obsolete in one sense, perhaps, but still in active use.  My main
screen-and-keyboard heads are SPARCstation 20s, and most of my other
machines (including all the ones in live use, I think) are PCI.

I can't undertake to build a Token Ring driver for that SBus card.  I'd
like to, but I do not have the dedication or spare time to reverse
engineer it, and I doubt you have the hardware documentation
driver-writing would need - that doc may not even exist any longer.

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