! This is a rather new port. It supports some types of machines with ! PowerPC processors in them -- but not all. Even though ! there are standards committees trying to resolve the problem, there are ! significant differences between various PowerPC computers, even when made ! by the same vendor! This port will run on some machines, but not on others. ! Check the list below.
! To work, a machine MUST have some variety of OpenBoot firmware!
! The processor support is quite stable at this point. ! Driver support is currently somewhat limited, due to most PCI devices ! only having been tested on little-endian machines. Additional device ! support for Macintosh hardware systems is under development any ! programming information for any recent Mac hardware would improve ! this situation.
! The following processors are supported: 603, 603e, 604, 604ev, 750.
! The port does not yet use real device drivers. It uses OpenFirmware ! for all device driver needs: console, disk, ethernet. It can be ! installed from netboot, floppy and network or cdrom. Netroot ! support exists, but is untested. ! The port has two versions of the kernel, one which only uses openfirmware ! for all devices, and a version that has been coded to support some MCG ! PowerStack and VI series machines. !
! Known working hardware:
! Hardware support under development:
! Machines that DO NOT WORK.
! The powerpc specific portions of the kernel came from the NetBSD port ! by Wolfgang Solfrank. The userland and build tools came from an ! independent and incomplete port by Dale Rahn. Hopefully pieces ! from that other port will be merged, device driver support for ! interrupts and some real driver support. ! The conversion to the Wolfgang port was done because it was running ! multiuser and the other port was still single user out of memory ramdisk ! (no fully working device drivers).
! After that work was done Per Fogelstrom added support for the VI Power4e ! vme board, removing openfirmware device support in the processes. (2.3 release)
! For the 2.4 release, support for the openfirmware devices were added back ! in a compatible fashion such that mixed ofw drivers and hardware drivers ! could be supported. After that was finished, the power4e support was adapted ! to work on the MCG PowerStack machines. Dec 21040, and some vga support was ! added, vga cannot be used as console yet, but can be used as a terminal. ! No X servers are supported, but the mechanism to access vga via mmap exists.
- For 2.5 support continued at the previous level as 2.4. -
- For 2.6 support an offical release was not made for the powerpc port. - Work on the iMac had started and compiler loader issues had not been - resolved which prevented the system from building out of the tree. -
- Post 2.6, iMac support has been added, further development is underway - to support the imac devices better and add support for other systems. - Initally with the imac driver support, compatibility with older - systems was lost. This is primarily due to a lack of testing, these - systems will be supported once the system changes are backported. -
Contact ! Theo de Raadt or ! Dale Rahn if you are interested in working with other people on this, or need more information.
! www@openbsd.org
![[OpenBSD]](images/smalltitle.gif){kind=small}
! !
! This is a port of OpenBSD to the Apple PowerMac platform. !
! The powerpc port was first imported into OpenBSD at the end of 1996. ! Portions of the kernel port came from the NetBSD/macppc port, and the ! userland and build ports came from Dale Rahn.
! Dale added in ELF binary support, and him and Per Fogelstrom ! continued on the general driver support for the next few releases. ! Support was added for OpenFirmware, VI Power4e boards, MCG Powerstack ! machines, Dec 21040, VGA terminal support, and so on.
! In 1998, the focus shifted towards the Apple machines, and Dale Rahn ! started work to make the range of iMacs and PowerMacs work with this port. ! Due to this, official powerpc releases were not made for the 2.6 and 2.7 ! releases as work continued. A number of compiler loader issues were resolved, ! a lot of iMac driver support was added, and compatibility with older systems ! was withdrawn to fully concentrate on the Apple machines.
! And now, the 2.8 release at the end of 2000 will be including ! an official powerpc port. +
! Currently only New World machines are supported. Tested working machines ! are the iMac machines Rev A - Rev C, and the PowerMac G4 systems including ! the Cube. To improve the list below, please mail your dmesg after ! installation to dmesg@openbsd.org, ! as detailed in the FAQ. !
! Machines !
! Onboard I/O modules (obio)
! PCI-Bridges
! Video Cards
Ethernet +
Hard Drive +
ATAPI Drives
SCSI Host Adapters
SCSI Storage +
USB Controllers/Hubs +
USB Devices +
!
! With multiple drives installed in the system, only certain drives can
! be configured as an OpenBSD root drive. Any other configurations than
! those below will not be able to properly detect which drive is the root
! drive, and so any attempt with either prompt for a root drive, or fail.
!
! The current X server has no mechanism to change the resolution
! of the display. To change the resolution, it is necessary to boot MacOS
! and change to the desired resolution under MacOS. It will save that
! resolution and OpenFirmware will boot in that resolution until connected
! to a different monitor. The X server will run in whatever resolution
! OpenFirmware boots in.
!
! If you are looking for to test new pre-release features, you can
! try one of the snapshots.
! For the powerpc architecture, snapshots are made available from time to time.
Contact
! Theo de Raadt or
! Dale Rahn
if you are interested in working with other people on this, or need more
information.
Unsupported Hardware:
!
!
!
! Root Drive:
!
!
! X Resolution:
!
!
! www@openbsd.org
! $OpenBSD: powerpc.html,v 1.23 2000/10/26 14:04:09 avsm Exp $