macppc

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Supported Hardware:

Currently only New World machines are supported. To improve the list below, please mail your dmesg after installation to dmesg@openbsd.org, as detailed in the FAQ.

Machines

• PowerMac G3 (B&W)
• PowerMac G4 (PCI Graphics? - untested but should work)
• PowerMac G4 (AGP Graphics)
• PowerMac G4 (Digital Audio)
• PowerMac G4 (QuickSilver)
• PowerMac G4 (QuickSilver 2002)
• PowerMac Dual G4
• PowerMac G4 Cube
• iMac Rev A
• iMac Rev B
• iMac Rev C
• iMac DV
• iMac DV+
• LCD iMac (new with 3.1)
• PowerBook G3 (FireWire)
• PowerBook G4
• iBook
• iBook2 (problems with Combo drive thought to be fixed in 3.1)
• StarMax (development in progress)
• others... (development in progress)

Multiboot/Shared HFS disks:

Multiboot/sharing a disk with OS X/MacOS 9 is possible as long as the disk is first partitioned with the MacOS utility. An "Unused" or other available partition must be left for OpenBSD's use. Since the machines are only able to boot from HFS (not MacOS X UFS) partitions the first partition must formated HFS(+), not UFS to be able to boot OpenBSD.

See INSTALL.macppc for more details on how to install a shared disk.

Standalone (no MacOS present) installation is also supported.

Root Drive:

When multiple drives are present in the system, only certain drives can be configured as the 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.

• ultra0 is always fine to use as an root drive.
• ultra1 is fine to use as a root disk (as long as ultra0 is a hard drive, not ATAPI).
• If no hard drive is located at ultra1, it is possible to use a hard drive configured as ide1 (zip bay) as root drive.
• It is not possible to use ide0 (CD-ROM) as a root drive unless no drives are connected to the Ultra IDE bus.

X Window System:

XFree86 Version 4.2.0 is supported on all systems. Only the ATI graphics adapters are supported with the accelerated X server at the current time. The Nvidia driver does not currently work. It is possible to use X in framebuffer mode with either the nvidia cards or ATI at the boot resolution/depth using the wsfb driver.

The wsfb driver (installed by default) will allow either the Nvidia cards or the ATI cards to run X in framebuffer mode at the boot resolution/depth. The directions on how to enable the accelerated X server is present in the /usr/X11R6/README file on the installed system.

Known Problems

• gm0 driver does not support 1000Mb operation, only 10/100Mb.
• Laptop systems may power off within 2-5 minutes if running off battery and the lid is closed.
• Feature: <CTRL><CMD><POWER> on ADB will reset
• Older iMacs can have a USB key repeat of the first key pressed after boot. Workaround is to press shift first or to disconnect and reconnect the USB mouse after the problem has occurred.

Supported Hardware:

Onboard I/O modules (obio)

• Apple Paddington
• Apple Keylargo

PCI-Bridges (pchb)

• Apple Uni-North
• Apple Uni-North AGP
• Apple Uni-North Eth
• Motorola MPC106 Host-PCI

Video Cards

• ATI Mach64 GP
• ATI Mach64 GV
• ATI Mach64 128 PK
• ATI Mach64 128 VR AGP
• ATI Mobility M3
• ATI Rage Fury AGP4x

Ethernet

• DEC DECchip 21040 (Tulip) (de)
• DEC DECchip 21143 (Tulip clones) (dc)
• Apple iMac Rev. A-C Ethernet (bm)
• Apple GMAC (gm)

• Aironet 802.11DS PCMCIA and PCI (an)
• WaveLAN 802.11DS PCMCIA (wi)

SCSI Host Adapters

• Symbios Logic 53c810, 53c825 (siop)

RAID Controllers

• Adaptec SCSI RAID (I2O) controllers (ASR-2100S, ASR-3200S, etc.) (iop)

Drives

• All IDE devices supported on the i386.
• All ATAPI drives supported on the i386.
• All SCSI drives supported on the i386.

USB Controllers/Hubs

• Apple USB (ohci)
• OHCI root hub (ohci)
• Opti RM861HA (ohci)
• Alps Electric Hub in Apple USB Keyboard

USB Devices

• Alps Electric Apple USB Keyboard (ukbd)
• Solid Year Keyboard and Mouse (ukbd) (ums)
• Logitech M4848 (ums)
• Kensington Kensington USB/PS2 Wheel Mouse (ums)
• USB Zip Drives (umass)

Cryptography Devices

• Hifn 7751/7811/7951 (hifn)
• Bluesteelnet 5501/5601, Broadcom 5805/5820/5821 (ubsec)

Unsupported Hardware:

• Apple PowerMac systems with a 601 processor or lack OpenFirmware will likely never be supported.
• At the current time, older OpenFirmware machines are not supported. This is mostly due to lack of developer resources to work on the support in addition to limited availability of hardware.
• On the device side, the following are recognized, but not supported:
  • Texas Instruments TSB12LV23 FireWire
• Built-in modems on most machines are not supported. iMac/G4 tower/older PowerBook has support for the serial port which the modem is connected, but the modem is not enabled. On most PowerMac G4 systems it is possible to purchase a serial port converter which replaces the modem which will function normally. USB modems on newer PowerBooks are not supported.
• The new 'digital audio' subsystem on ibooks and newer PBG4, G4 and iMacs is not supported.
• Built-in Cardbus slot in PowerBook systems is not supported.
• Sleep/Suspend is not supported.
• Turning off the backlight/screen blanking is not supported.

If you are looking for to test new pre-release features, you can try one of the snapshots. For the macppc 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.

A mailing list for users and developers exists at ppc@openbsd.org. To join the OpenBSD/macppc mailing list, send a message body of "subscribe ppc" to majordomo@OpenBSD.org. Please be sure to check our mailing list policy before subscribing.