SMSC/Microchip LAN91xx, LAN92xx, and LAN9420 Ethernet controllers
A collection of Ethernet controllers originally from SMSC (now Microchip), spanning old ISA and PCMCIA cards like the SMC9194 and SMC91C92, the EPIC100 PCI chip from the late 1990s, and the more modern LAN911x/LAN921x embedded MAC+PHY parts and the LAN9420 PCI chip widely used in industrial boards, set-top boxes, and single-board computers.
recommendation
Worth keeping but worth annotating because the directory mixes genuinely old ISA/PCMCIA parts with chips Microchip still sells new in 2025. The LAN9210, LAN9220, and LAN9420 are all listed as in production, the LAN9118 is marked not-recommended-for-new-designs, and the smsc911x driver was still receiving real bug fixes in late 2025 (an EEPROM MAC re-read fix landed via the stable tree). A note distinguishing the live embedded parts from the legacy ISA/PCMCIA sub-drivers would help future triage.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Upstream/stable traffic is still landing for this directory in late 2025; smsc911x received a functional fix ('add second read of EEPROM mac when possible corruption seen').
- microchip.com
Microchip lists LAN9220 as 'In Production', showing at least part of the smsc911x/LAN92xx family was still sold new in 2025.
- microchip.com
Microchip lists LAN9210 as 'In Production', reinforcing continued availability of the LAN921x family for embedded deployments.
- microchip.com
Microchip lists LAN9420 as 'In Production', so the PCI LAN9420 portion of this directory is also still an active product.
- microchip.com
Microchip marks LAN9118 as 'Not Recommended for new designs', indicating parts of the family are aging even though the directory is not wholly obsolete.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local tree inspection (`rg`, `sed`) showed this directory contains real Ethernet drivers spanning ISA/PCMCIA/PCI and embedded platform parts, with configs for SMC9194, SMC91X, PCMCIA_SMC91C92, EPIC100, SMSC911X, and SMSC9420. `lore_file_timeline` on the directory path returned no aggregate hits, so I checked per-file lore activity: `lore_activity` for `drivers/net/ethernet/smsc/smsc911x.c` showed recent 2025 stable/mainline traffic, including a real bug fix, which argues against deprecation/removal. A removal-search attempt via `lore_regex` timed out, and no removal evidence was otherwise found. Web search on official Microchip product pages showed LAN9220, LAN9210, and LAN9420 still 'In Production', while LAN9118 is 'Not Recommended for new designs'. Overall this is a mixed legacy-plus-niche-active directory: some subdrivers target clearly old hardware, but the family still has shipping parts and live upstream fixes, so `keep-annotate` fits better than deprecate/remove.