Neoclock-4X driver removal

[Eric S. Raymond]

Fcc: ~/postings/outmail

In the process of resolving a documentation MR by James Browning 
I discovered our first candidate for outright driver removal in
several years - the neoclock4x driver.

We've known about the following issues for years:

* It only reports 2-digit years

* It has 2ms jitter, way worse than a cheap GPS these days.

* All the usual signal-propagation and interference problems that
  have caused most other longwave time receivers to be replaced by
  GPSes.

* In 2015, when I first went looking, these couldn't be found for sale
  anywhere on the Web. not even on eBay or at remainder houses.  This
  hasn't changed.
  
The new information is that the device vendor has vanished off the
net since 2015. So there is no prospect of new devices being sold
or of further vendor support.

I looked in the NTP Classic revision history and discovered the
following things:

1. The driver was merged in on 2002-07-18.

2. The last patch by the original author is dated 2003-01-10.

3. Everything after that looks like minor fixes and polishing by 
   the Classic crew.

4. None of the bug tags are evidence of actual use; they're all
   port or build-chain problems.
   
The two-digit years are a tell that the wire protocol this device
speaks device was designed before the Y2K flap, and it was thus
already obsolete before its driver was merged.

It's certainly not anything you'll find in a modern data center,
not with jitter that large. There might be a hobbyist or three 
still running one somwhere.

Are there any technical or process objections to ditching it?
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

"Gun control" is a job-safety program for criminals.