Fri, 02 Jun 2006
COSA
Some eight years ago, I wrote a driver for synchronous serial boards named COSA. COSA was an ISA-based board, so it is pretty obsolete these days. I occasionally fix the in-kernel driver, when somebody reports a bug (last fix was about half a year ago, IIRC). Today, an e-mail with the subject "COSA" arrived:
It was not a bug report, just some user of this driver sent me a mail, telling me that they are moving to a newer technology, and saying thanks for the driver, which worked for them for several years. The above photo (and two others) of their old Compaq Deskpro router with the COSA board (that green thing in the upper part) was attached. I was glad that my driver helped some people using flexible Linux-based routers instead of slow, expensive, and proprietary solutions (read: Cisco low-end routers). And of course, the driver helped the sales of COSA boards as well - I guess in the end, despite being originally designed for use with NetBSD, there might have been more Linux-based routers with COSA than NetBSD-based ones.