Sounds like a bitter old fossil. My first look at Linux, there were 200 sound-card drivers in the source base. Mostly identical except for the layout of bits in the control register. Any change to the api or conventions, 200 files had to be edited. An ideal place to refactor as a 'sound card' base class and derive classes to handle the (miniscule) differences.

"Keeping new ideas away" is a good working definition of an old coot.