But if LAN_DATA is a hardware register, reading it (even if the value is not used) might be very important.
So you should check twice before removing that code.
It's a data register. What I wasn't sure about is the reset following that code (*LAN_POINTER = 0x04e0) so I left it there. This shouldn't do any harm, it's a leftover from checking destination address or so which was removed by Alan because it's not task for a driver.