Intel 82586 and 82596 Ethernet controllers for legacy workstations
A collection of 10 Mbit Ethernet drivers for Intel's 82586 and 82596 controller chips, which were soldered onto a variety of late-1980s and early-1990s workstations including HP 9000 PA-RISC machines (via the LASI chipset), Sun-3 systems, and Siemens Nixdorf RM servers. The hardware is long out of production and survives mainly in hobbyist retrocomputing setups.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as legacy-platform support. The chips are integrated into specific vintage workstations (HP PA-RISC, Sun-3, Siemens Nixdorf RM), so there is no drop-in replacement driver — removing the code would simply orphan those machines on Linux. Upstream still sees occasional cleanup patches (a 2023 netdev touch is on record), and OpenBSD continues to ship equivalent support, suggesting a small but real retro userbase. An obsolete-platform annotation would set expectations honestly without breaking anyone.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Recent upstream attention exists for this directory; at least one netdev patch touched i825xx in 2023, indicating the code is not abandoned even if activity is sparse.
- openpa.net
HP 9000 712 systems used an integrated Intel 82596CA 10 Mbit Ethernet controller in the HP LASI chipset, showing this driver targets early-1990s PA-RISC workstation hardware.
- en.wikipedia.org
Sun-3 systems launched in 1985, matching the age/profile of the sun3_82586-supported hardware and reinforcing that these are legacy platforms rather than modern deployments.
- en.wikipedia.org
Siemens Nixdorf, whose RM systems are covered by sni_82596, was defunct by 1999, supporting the conclusion that new-system deployments are effectively over.
- man.openbsdhandbook.com
Current OpenBSD documentation still describes the Intel i82596 on HP PA-RISC systems, which is evidence of surviving niche retro/legacy deployments rather than mainstream use.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory: Kconfig and module markers show board-specific NIC drivers for Intel 82586/82596-family controllers. Lore evidence came from `lore_file_timeline` on drivers/net/ethernet/i825xx/82596.c and shows recent maintenance, but the visible touches are sparse and mostly cleanup-class, so removal would be premature. Deployment evidence came from web search results: OpenPA identified HP LASI systems with integrated 82596CA; Wikipedia pages for Sun-3 and Siemens Nixdorf dated the supported machine families to the 1980s/1990s; OpenBSD's current ie(4) page shows the hardware still survives in hobbyist/legacy use. No natural in-tree replacement covers the same onboard devices; replacement is usually replacing the whole platform/NIC, not switching Linux drivers. Recommendation is keep the code but annotate it as legacy/obsolete-platform support.