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<h2>OpenBSD/arc</h2>

<hr>
<h3><strong>History and Status:</strong></h3>

<p>
The early history is not very clear. Apparently the first work was
done by CMU as part of their Mach project.  The initial hardware was
the DEC R2000/R3000-based Decstations.  This code was later used by
both the Sprite and BSD groups.  The 4.4BSD code, known as the `pmax'
port, was made freely available in mid '93.  It was merged into the
NetBSD tree by a variety of people, but has never been very stable,
reliable, or complete.  Compiler toolkit problems have plagued the
port because the standard a.out executable format is an imperfect
match to the MIPS architecture.
</p>

<p>
Per Fogelstr&ouml;m became familiar with the code after porting it to a
home-built IDT R3081 based board.  Subsequently he added R4400 support
when porting it to the MIPS R4400 Acer PICA board.  Willowglen
Singapore purchased a second PICA board for Theo de Raadt so that he
could improve the port for use as a development system for an internal
project.  Since then Theo, Per and others have completed the port.
</p>

<p>
The Acer PICA is a dead platform.  Acer no longer makes the machine,
but even worse the machines are very rare.  But the Acer PICA was just
one of a whole family of similar machines built by other companies
like MIPS, Deskstation, NEC, Olivetti.  These machines were known as
ARC machines, built according to the "Advanced RISC Computing" specification.
No new ARC BIOS machines for MIPS will likely be manufactured.
Microsoft has announced that it will no longer support MIPS after NT 4.0.
OpenBSD/arc provides a good alternative to NT, especially now that no more OS
updates for NT MIPS will happen.
</p>

<p>
As a result, the code has been modified to make it more versatile, and
eventually it should support a larger whole range of ARC machines.
Hopefully a port will result that can run on the full range of MIPS
processors: R3000, R4000, R4400, R46x0, R5000, and R10000.
</p>

<p>
<h3>Currently the port supports the following:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Acer Pica: 150MHz R4400PC, ISA, with onboard ethernet, scsi, video,
	and serial.
<li>Deskstation Tyne: 133MHz R4600, ISA and VLB.
<li>Deskstation rPC44: 100MHz R4400PC, EISA bus.
</ul>
</p>

<p>
<h3>Supported devices include:</h3>
<ul>
<li> graphics:
  <ul>
  <li> built-in S3 VGA graphics adapter on PICA.
  <li> Standard VGA graphics adapter on rPC44 and Tyne.
  <li> Note that X11R6 currently supports only S3 boards.
  </ul>
 
<li> keyboard:
  <ul>
  <li> Standard PC compatible keyboard with optionally driver softloaded keymaps.
  </ul>
  
<li> mouse:
  <ul>
  <li> PS2 mouse on PICA
  <li> Serial mouse on /dev/tty00 on rPC44 and Tyne.
  </ul>
 
<li> serial ports:
  <ul>
  <li> on-board tty00 and tty01 (PICA. can not yet be used as console)
  <li> ISA tty00 and tty01 on systems without serial ports on the motherboard (Tyne).
  <li> ISA tty02 and tty03 on all ISA capable systems.
  </ul>

<li> parallel ports:
  <ul>
  <li> parallel ports is supported on-board (PICA) or on ISA (rPC44 and Tyne).
  </ul>
 
<li> floppy:
  <ul>
  <li> floppy is supported on PICA only.
  </ul>
 
<li> ethernet:
  <ul>
  <li> on-board SONIC ethernet controller (PICA only)
  <li> 3Com Etherlink boards (All ISA capable systems)
  <li> NE2000 compatible ISA boards.
  </ul>
 
<li> SCSI:
  <ul>
  <li> on-board NCR53C96 SCSI controller (PICA)
  <li> VLB "Buslogic BT-440C/445C" SCSI controller.
  </ul>
 
<li> IDE:
  <ul>  
  <li> IDE disks via wd driver on ISA bus. Bootable only on Deskstation systems.
  </ul>
</ul>
</p>

<p>
<h3>The following ports are also being worked on:</h3>
<ul>
<li>NKK Aquarious R4700 PCI machine.
<li>A Willowglen R3081 ARC-lookalike board used as an embedded system.
</ul>
</p>

<p>
The people working the most on OpenBSD/arc currently consists of
Per Fogelstr&ouml;m, Theo de Raadt, Niklas Hallqvist, Warner Losh,
and a few others. Of course, others are very welcome!
</p>

<p>
<h3>Recent developments:</h3>
<ul>
<li>ELF shared libraries throughout
<li>ELF executables that page in, unlike NetBSD where they are
    read into memory.
<li>nlist() function that understands a.out, ELF, or ecoff binaries.
<li>The kvm utilities work.
<li>ISA bus support on the Pica.
<li>ISA and VLB support on the Tyne.
<li>ISA bus support on the rPC44.
<li>gdb works.
<li>Completely native build.
</ul>
</p>

<p>
The ARC port is complete, including basically everything you can expect
on any OpenBSD port.
</p>

<hr>
<p>
<a href=ftp.html>Snapshots are made available from time to time.</a>

<p>
Send mail to <a href=mailto:deraadt@theos.com>Theo de Raadt</a> and
<a href=mailto:pefo@openbsd.org>Per Fogelstr&ouml;m</a>.
</p>

<hr>
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<a href=mailto:www@openbsd.org>www@openbsd.org</a>
<br>
<small>$OpenBSD: arc.html,v 1.24 1997/12/01 10:51:02 todd Exp $</small>

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