USB ADSL Modems (SpeedTouch 330, Conexant AccessRunner, Analog Devices Eagle)
A family of consumer USB ADSL modems that plugged directly into a PC instead of a router, sold mostly between the late 1990s and the late 2000s. The lineup includes the Alcatel/Thomson SpeedTouch 330, Conexant AccessRunner, and Analog Devices Eagle/930 chipsets, which carried ATM-over-DSL traffic over USB 1.1.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche: the hardware has not been sold new for over a decade (the SpeedTouch brand was wound down in 2009) and very few users still rely on USB DSL modems, but the code is not abandoned. Upstream developers were still touching both the shared usbatm core and the SpeedTouch leaf driver during 2024 with cleanups and small fixes, and there is no in-tree replacement covering this hardware class, so removal would orphan the remaining legacy users without benefit.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Recent upstream work still touches the usbatm core in 2024 via non-trivial maintenance ('USB: Convert from tasklet to BH workqueue').
- lore.kernel.org
A hardware-specific leaf driver in this directory (speedtch) still received a 2024 fix patch, indicating residual maintenance rather than abandonment.
- lore.kernel.org
The directory also saw 2024 patch traffic for usb/atm files ('Correct some typos'), consistent with low-level upkeep.
- en.wikipedia.org
The SpeedTouch product line is discontinued; the brand was discontinued in 2009.
- speedguide.net
SpeedTouch 330 is identified as a discontinued USB 1.1 ADSL1 modem, reinforcing that this driver family targets legacy broadband hardware.
- cateee.net
LKDDb still maps the ueagle-atm option to specific legacy USB DSL devices, showing the driver remains buildable and tied to old ADSL USB modems.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Lore evidence came from lore_activity on drivers/usb/atm/usbatm.c and drivers/usb/atm/speedtch.c; it shows recent maintenance/cleanup traffic in 2024-2025 but no removal evidence surfaced in the sampled activity. Deployment evidence came from web search results for SpeedTouch/USB DSL hardware and LKDDb pages: the hardware class is discontinued legacy USB ADSL equipment, so new sales in 2025 are implausible and present-day use is likely limited to legacy/industrial holdouts. Recommendation is keep-annotate rather than deprecate/remove because upstream still accepts fixes for this niche code and there is no clear in-tree replacement driver for USB DSL modems.