From: Adrian Bunk Andries Brouwer proposed this patch with the following comment: As observed earlier, ps2esdi was broken as a module, and the passing of geometry boot parameters is broken. But does it still work with kernels 2.3 or later? I think it does, but failed to verify that. I found an IBM PS/2 model 70-A21 with 8 MB and 120 MB ESDI disk. Tried a few distribution boot floppies to see whether they would boot. Slackware has special ibmmca bootdisks. SW 3.3 - Linux 2.1.43 - boots fine SW 4.0 - Linux 2.2.6 - hangs SW 7.0 - Linux 2.2.13 - boots fine SW 8.1 - Linux 2.4.18 - boots, but every single command is killed by OOM SW 10.0 - Linux 2.4.26 - kernel panic: no 386 supported Then Debian: Woody - Linux 2.2.10 - boots fine, but the rootdisk hangs Sarge - Linux 2.4.27 - does not recognize the ESDI disk, and the rootdisk crashes by OOM. So, good luck with 2.1 and 2.2 kernels, only failures with later kernels. What about other people? The two major Linux/MCA sites were http://glycerine.itsmm.uni.edu/mca (also referenced in Documentation/mca.txt) but it doesnt exist any longer, and http://www.dgmicro.com/mca/, which still exists ("last update: Jan 28 1999"), but the binaries it refers to live on ftp.dgmicro.com, which isn't there anymore. Concerning the speed: I measured this ESDI disk under Linux as transferring 50 kB/s, that is 4% of the speed the IBM specs claim. Also other Linux users complained that the disk is much faster under DOS. My proposal for this patch would be to get it into one 2.6 kernel (is it too late for 2.6.11?) and wait if anyone was still using it and screams, and remove it a few months later otherwise. Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- 25-akpm/drivers/block/Kconfig | 2 +- 1 files changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff -puN drivers/block/Kconfig~mark-blk_dev_ps2-as-broken drivers/block/Kconfig --- 25/drivers/block/Kconfig~mark-blk_dev_ps2-as-broken 2005-02-24 21:07:30.000000000 -0800 +++ 25-akpm/drivers/block/Kconfig 2005-02-24 21:07:30.000000000 -0800 @@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ config MAC_FLOPPY config BLK_DEV_PS2 tristate "PS/2 ESDI hard disk support" - depends on MCA && MCA_LEGACY + depends on MCA && MCA_LEGACY && BROKEN help Say Y here if you have a PS/2 machine with a MCA bus and an ESDI hard disk. _