OpenBSD/i386

History and Status:

The i386 port has quite a few architecture specific changes from the NetBSD/i386 port, but the major ones are:

• Runs on machines with 512MB of ram or more, does not crash.
• the addition of ISA bounce buffer support so that ISA scsi cards (ie. Adaptec 1542) can be used in machines with more than 16MB of memory.
• The same one GENERIC kernel works on all machines, whether it has BusLogic or Adaptec scsi cards.
• some APM and PCMCIA support (3c589, NE2000-clone, and COM ports)
• some DDB improvements
• OPTI mcd support
• ATAPI cdrom support
• P5/P6 improved NTP support
• pccons has userland replaceable keymaps, and screen blanking
• boot "-a" support like other ports (asks for root partition)
• floppy disk formatting
• Cyclades Cyclom serial driver
• faster (assembly) IP checksumming (typically 20% faster, up to 62% faster in some cases)
• vmstat -i prints interrupt information.
• latest rev of adaptec 2940 driver from FreeBSD
• supports "ep* at port ? irq ?"
• faster i386-specific `pccom' device driver.
• /dev/pctr pseudo-device & program for accessing the Pentium and PentiumPro performance counters.
• Fixed major i386 kernel interrupt race.
• Fixed UCONSOLE security hole without breaking xconsole.
• Much faster i387-specific libm available for those who want the option.
• ISA Plug-and-Play support
• the GPL FP emulator from Linux/Freebsd, for users who want to use it. Much better!
• Prefer partition type 166, so that OpenBSD can co-reside on the same disk as a 386BSD/NetBSD/FreeBSD install.
• Attempt to fault in a ptp; this avoids two ptp panic cases.
• RAW_PART is now 'c', not 'd'. It should start at 0, and cover your whole disk.
• Updated ncr driver, much more performance.
• 3c59x and 3c9xx cards work.
• Can mount DOS file systems with cluster size > 16KB.

Snapshots are made available from time to time.