Linux 7.1 Removes Some Obsolete PCMCIA Drivers That Likely Haven't Been Used In Years

Linux 7.1 continues the cleanup of legacy hardware support by dropping a set of PCMCIA host controller drivers that have seen little to no use for many years.

The PCMCIA standard was once common in laptops and embedded systems, but native support vanished from new machines around 2009. Since then the kernel community has gradually removed drivers for cards that no longer appear in modern hardware. In 2023 the char‑driver layer for PCMCIA was eliminated, and the current change follows that trend by targeting the low‑level host controller code.

Three specific drivers are being removed:

Driver	Bus type	Approx. age of last known use
i82092	PCI‑to‑PCMCIA bridge	>20 years
i82365	ISA‑bus host bridge	ISA era hardware
tcic	Databook TCIC family	Legacy ISA/PCI boards

The i82092 driver suffered from a null‑pointer dereference bug that persisted from early Git history until a fix arrived in 2021. Both the i82365 and tcic drivers serve ISA‑attached controllers, which are even rarer than PCI‑based PCMCIA solutions in today’s systems.

Ethan Nelson‑Moore, who authored the patch, explained the removal:

"PCMCIA is almost completely obsolete (the last computers supporting it natively were from ~2009), and the general consensus seems to be that support for it should be gradually removed from the kernel. In 2023, an initial step of removing all the PCMCIA char drivers was taken in commit 9b12f050c76f ("char: pcmcia: remove all the drivers"), and that has not been reverted, so it seems logical to continue this process by removing more low‑hanging fruit. These host controller drivers have had no meaningful changes since their status was discussed in 2022, and are unlikely to have any remaining users. Remove them and a couple references to them in comments. The i82365 and tcic drivers are for ISA‑attached host controllers, which are even less likely to be used nowadays than ones on other buses. The i82092 driver has almost certainly not been used in over 20 years. It was broken by a null pointer dereference since the dawn of Git history (2.6.12-rc2 in 2005) until someone fixed it in 2021 in commit e39cdacf2f66 ("pcmcia: i82092: fix a null pointer dereference bug"). From their dmesg log, it is clear they were testing in an emulated environment and not on real hardware."

With the drivers excised, the Linux 7.1 source tree is lighter by 3,169 lines of code. This reduction contributes to a smaller build footprint and simplifies maintenance for developers who no longer need to test or document obsolete hardware paths.

While the removed drivers are unlikely to affect any current users, the change signals the kernel’s ongoing commitment to shedding dead weight. Future releases may target additional PCMCIA related code or other legacy subsystems that have similarly fallen out of use.