Legacy ATM PCI and SBus network adapters
Drivers for late-1990s and early-2000s Asynchronous Transfer Mode network cards, including Efficient Networks ENI155P, IDT/NICStAR 77252, Fore Systems ForeRunner and ForeRunnerHE, Interphase, and Solos PCI, plus helpers for tunneling ATM over TCP. ATM was a cell-switched telecom and enterprise backbone technology largely displaced by Ethernet, IP, and MPLS.
recommendation
Worth keeping but flagging as a niche legacy area: the code still sees real upstream maintenance, with around 40 substantive commits over five years from more than two dozen authors and activity as recent as early 2026 in netdev traffic, yet the hardware has been obsolete in mainstream networking for a long time. No removal effort appears to be in flight, so the subsystem should remain available for the residual telecom, industrial, and lab users who still rely on these cards while being clearly documented as legacy.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
`drivers/atm/` still appeared in recent netdev-maintainer traffic in April 2026, indicating the code is not abandoned outright.
- git.kernel.org
The subsystem still exposes configuration for legacy ATM boards and test/transport helpers such as ENI155P, NICStAR, IDT77252, Interphase, ForeRunner, ForeRunnerHE, and Solos PCI.
- en.wikipedia.org
ATM is a legacy networking/telecom technology that has largely been displaced by Ethernet/IP/MPLS in mainstream deployments.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Keep-annotate: static evidence supplied with the task shows non-trivial upstream maintenance (40 substantive commits in 5 years, most recent substantive touch 2026-02-13, 27 authors), and my lore check found a 2026 netdev pull mentioning `drivers/atm/` rather than a clear removal series. Local source inspection (`exec_command` on `drivers/atm/Kconfig`) shows this directory targets old PCI/SBUS ATM adapters plus synthetic helpers (`atmtcp`, `adummy`), which points to residual legacy/industrial/lab use rather than healthy new-hardware demand. `lore_file_timeline` on the directory path returned no indexed events, so removal evidence is inconclusive rather than positive. URL acquisition: lore URL via `lore_regex`; kernel.org Kconfig URL by canonical recall of the upstream source tree after local file inspection; Wikipedia ATM URL by canonical recall for deployment context. `hardware_still_sold_new_in_2025=false` and `deployments_today=low` are inference-based from the legacy ATM market position and the specific old adapter families still listed in Kconfig, not from a direct vendor EOL page.