Re: [PATCH net 00/18] Remove a number of ISA and PCMCIA Ethernet drivers

[Byron Stanoszek]

On Tue, 21 Apr 2026, Andrew Lunn wrote:

> These old drivers have not been much of a Maintenance burden until
> recently. Now there are more newbies using AI and fuzzers finding
> issues, resulting in more work for Maintainers. Fixing these old
> drivers make little sense, if it is not clear they have users.
>
>      drivers: net: 3com: 3c59x: Remove this driver

Hi Andrew,

I happen to still use this driver on several hundred industrial PC
installations that were outfitted with 3com 3C905-B & CX cards 15+ years ago.
The old hardware still runs, therefore those cards haven't needed to be
replaced. I keep these systems up to date with the latest Linux kernel roughly
once per year.

I understand the maintenance burden, but I would be delighted to continue
receiving bug fixes for this driver via the mainline Linux kernel if you are
still willing to continue to support it.

Thanks and best regards,
 -Byron