National Semiconductor DP8390 and NE2000-compatible Ethernet cards
A large family of 10 Mbps Ethernet cards built around the National Semiconductor DP8390 chip and its clones, including the ubiquitous NE2000 ISA/PCI cards, PCMCIA variants, and adapters for Amiga Zorro and Motorola ColdFire systems. They dominated cheap Ethernet from the late 1980s through the early 2000s and remain the default NIC in many retro emulators.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as legacy-only, because mainstream deployments on modern PCs are essentially gone yet the code still has live users in three niches: retro-computing (DOSBox-X and similar emulators expose NE2000 as the default guest NIC), Amiga hobbyists (the X-Surf-100 Zorro card was still being sold new by iComp into 2025/2026), and occasional embedded boards. Upstream maintainers have not abandoned it — a functional fix landed as recently as April 2026 — and a 2021 proposal to remove the directory did not proceed, so retirement is not imminent.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
As of April 21, 2026, the tree still receives functional fixes for `ne2k-pci`, so the code is not abandoned upstream.
- lore.kernel.org
There was an explicit 2021 proposal to remove the 8390 network drivers, showing maintainers have considered retirement.
- icomp.de
At least one board covered by this directory, the Amiga X-Surf-100 handled by `xsurf100.c`, was still listed in stock by the vendor in late 2025/early 2026.
- dosbox-x.com
NE2000 remains relevant in emulator/retro-computing niches because DOSBox-X still documents NE2000 emulation for guest networking.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
`exec_command` on local Kconfig shows this directory spans ISA/PCI/PCMCIA/Zorro/Amiga/ColdFire 8390-family drivers, including `NE2K_PCI` and `XSURF100`; `lore_file_timeline` produced the cited 2026 fix and 2021 removal attempt URLs. `web.search_query` found the iComp shop page and DOSBox-X networking guide. Overall signal: mainstream/new deployments are effectively gone, but there is still niche new hardware plus emulator and retro-system use, and upstream still accepts fixes; that argues against deprecation/removal, but merits annotation as legacy-only.