macppc

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Supported Hardware:

PowerPC-based Macintosh systems are divided into "Old World" and "New World" systems, the difference being the design of the system ROM. Only "New World" machines are supported. Known compatible systems include the following:

• 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:

Having OpenBSD multiboot, or share, a disk with OS X/MacOS 9 is possible as long as the disk is first partitioned with the macOS utility, Drive Setup (MacOS9) or System Disk Utility (Mac OS X). Unallocated space or a no longer desired partition must be left for OpenBSD's use. Since OpenBSD is 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.

Stand-alone (no MacOS present) installation is also supported.

Root Drive:

Modern MacPPC systems have two IDE interfaces (called Ultra and IDE), each of which can have two devices on them (ultra0, ultra1, ide0, ide1). When multiple drives are present in the system, there are limitations of which drives can be configured as the OpenBSD root drive. Invalid configurations will not be able to properly detect which drive is the root drive, so any attempt will either prompt for a root drive or fail.

• ultra0 is always a valid root drive.
• ultra1 is valid as a root disk, as long as ultra0 is a hard drive, not a non-hard disk ATAPI device).
• ide1 (Zip drive bay) is valid as a root disk if no hard drive is located at ultra1,
• ide0 (CD-ROM) is valid as a root drive only if no hard drives are connected to the Ultra bus.

X Window System:

XFree86 Version 4.2.0 is supported on all MacPPC systems, however only the ATI graphics adapters are supported by an accelerated X server at the current time. The nVidia accelerated X server does not currently work, however nVidia (and ATI) cards can be used by X in framebuffer (unaccelerated) mode, at the boot resolution and color depth using the wsfb driver (installed by default).

Directions on enabling the accelerated X server is in the /usr/X11R6/README file on the installed system.

Known Problems

• gm0 ethernet driver does not support 1000Mbps operation, only 10/100Mbps.
• Laptop systems may power off within 2-5 minutes if the lid is closed while running from battery.
• Older iMacs can have a problem with the USB keyboard driver where the first key pressed after boot will repeat endlessly. The workaround is to press <SHIFT> first or to disconnect and reconnect the USB mouse after the problem has occurred.

Other Features

• <CTRL><CMD><POWER> on ADB (not USB) keyboards will reset the computer.

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 and IDE Host Adapters

• Symbios Logic 53c810, 53c825 (siop)
• All PCI IDE (pciide) adapters supported by the i386 platform

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)

Other Devices

• Serial Ports: While the modern PowerMacintosh series has no external standard serial ports, many have an on-board modem which can be removed and replaced with an adapter (several manufacturers of these exist) which will produce a standard (and supported) serial port.

Cryptography Devices

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

Unsupported Hardware:

• Older Apple PowerMac systems with a 601 processor and those that lack OpenFirmware are not supported.
• Older OpenFirmware machines are not currently supported. This is mostly due to lack of developer resources and limited availability of hardware.
• Texas Instruments TSB12LV23 FireWire is recognized, but not supported.
• Built-in modems on most machines are not supported. In many systems, the serial port the modem is attached to is supported, but the modem itself is not supported.
• Newer PowerBooks have an internal modem attached as a USB device, these are not supported.
• The new 'digital audio' subsystem on iBooks and newer PBG4, G4 and iMacs is not supported.
• The built-in Cardbus slot in PowerBook systems is not supported.
• Sleep/Suspend is not supported.
• Turning off the backlight and screen blanking is not supported.

If you are looking for or are willing to test new pre-release features, you can try using a snapshot which are made available on the FTP sites 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.