The ie(4) driver in 7.x has several issues. First of all, it has several compiler warnings that haven't been successfully fixed in several years and are currently just ignored. More importantly, it hasn't been updated to use more modern FreeBSD APIs like bus_space (still uses inb/outb) and SMPng locking. If someone is using this driver and is willing to test fixes for it, then it can be updated. If there isn't anyone who is using this driver and willing to test fixes, then it will be removed from the tree at some point in the future (say a month or two). -- John Baldwin