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Date:   Sun, 10 Jan 2021 20:51:37 +0100
From:   Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>
To:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@kernel.org>
Cc:     Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
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Subject: Re: Old platforms: bring out your dead
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On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 06:27:12PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 5:48 PM Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch> wrote:
> >
> > > For this platform, I'm most interested in whether there are still users
> > > that rely on board files instead of DT. AFAIU we could just fold
> > > the DT variant into arch-mvebu like kirkwood was, right?
> >
> > Hi Arnd
> >
> > I'm actually booting my device using a board file. But Debian
> > flash-kernel is pretty unhappy about that. The bootloader i have on
> > this machine is too old to passed DT blob. I will test appended DT
> > blob still works. And see if we have any board files which also don't
> > have a DT representation.
 
Hi Arnd

Appended DT works fine for my device.

> It may help to ask for these at
> https://github.com/1000001101000/Debian_on_Buffalo/,

Thanks for the link.

I looked at the remaining board files and i'm cooking up a set of
patches. I don't see any reason to keep the Marvell reference designs
around, especially since one has been converted to DT and gives a good
example how the others could be converted.

The two WiFi devices have been dropped by OpenWRT, too little
RAM/FLASH. OpenWRT seems like the most likely downstream user, so if
they have given up supporting them, i think it is safe for mainline to
drop them.

I checked with the ts78xx Maintainer and he says we can drop that.

Kurobox Pro has a DTS file, so i've dropped to board file.

What is left are NAS boxes. The low FLASH is not really an issue for
them, they can run with the OS on the disk. And they are the sort of
device which does have a long life.

       Andrew