Adaptec AIC-7xxx parallel SCSI host adapters
A family of Adaptec parallel-SCSI host bus adapters built around the AIC-77xx and AIC-78xx chips, covering EISA, VLB, and PCI cards from the Fast SCSI era through Ultra160. They were ubiquitous in workstations and servers from the mid-1990s into the early 2000s for connecting hard disks, tape drives, and scanners.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche, because the hardware (Adaptec's Fast through Ultra160 parallel-SCSI cards from the 1990s and early 2000s) is long out of production, but the code still sees real upstream maintenance, including a 2023 linux-scsi fix and routine treewide touches in 2024. Microchip, which now owns Adaptec, only sells modern PCIe SAS/SATA/NVMe adapters, so any remaining users are running legacy servers, industrial systems, or retro hardware rather than buying new boards.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Upstream still sees non-mechanical maintenance for aic7xxx; this 2023 linux-scsi patch fixes return-value handling in the driver.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows CONFIG_SCSI_AIC7XXX is still present in current kernels and covers Adaptec PCI plus EISA/VLB SCSI hardware, indicating the driver remains upstream-supported for legacy adapters.
- microchip.com
Microchip's current Adaptec-branded storage adapters are modern PCIe Gen4 tri-mode SAS/SATA/NVMe products, not parallel-SCSI AIC77xx/AIC78xx boards.
- microchip.com
Microchip treats Adaptec as an acquired legacy product line and points users to newer equivalent products, reinforcing that the original AIC7xxx-era hardware is long obsolete in the new-sales market.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Recommendation is keep-annotate: the hardware family is clearly legacy parallel-SCSI (Kconfig/docs in local tree and LKDDb), and current Microchip Adaptec offerings are newer SAS/SATA/NVMe adapters, so new 2025 sales for AIC77xx/AIC78xx are unlikely. But removal evidence was not found, and lore activity shows real upkeep rather than total abandonment; lore_file_timeline on drivers/scsi/aic7xxx/aic7xxx_osm_pci.c returned 2023 fix traffic and 2024 treewide touches. Source acquisition: lore URL from MCP lore_file_timeline; LKDDb URL from web search; Microchip URLs from web search. No natural in-tree replacement exists for the same exact controllers, so replacement_driver is null. Deployments today are likely low: mostly legacy servers, industrial/embedded holdouts, and retro hardware rather than new deployments.