Re: realtek 8139

[Rian Hunter]

On Mon, 2004-02-23 at 13:08, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote: 
>    It should not be hard to update most drivers to the current linux
>    2.0 drivers.  I can do that when I am really bored someday.  But I
>    would appreciate it if other people would do this instead.
> 
> Understand that this isn't a "Linux 2.0.x" driver, it is the latest
> version of the rtl8139 driver made by Donald Becker.  Infact, I would
> bet that we could update quite a few network drivers from his package,
> since it is backwards compatible to like Linux 1.0.x or something
> sick...

Linux doesn't use Becker's driver for realtek 81(2|3)9 cards anymore. It
uses a rewritten version of Becker's driver which isn't as good (but
apparently it was to Linus) for reason's listed at
http://www.scyld.com/network/rtl8139.html. Also compatibility with the
Hurd's Linux driver base shouldn't be a problem because like Alfred said
he writes his drivers very backwards compatible.
-rian