powerpc

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History:

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 ELF binary support, and then work with Per Fogelstrom continued on 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compiler loader issues were resolved, a lot of iMac driver support was added, and compatibility with older systems was withdrawn to fully concentrate on the Apple machines.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.

Supported Hardware:

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

• PowerMac G4
• PowerMac Dual G4
• PowerMac Cube
• iMac Rev A
• iMac Rev B
• iMac Rev C
• iMac DV (post-2.8)
• iMac DV+ (unknown)
• StarMax (development in progress)
• others... (development in progress)

Onboard I/O modules (obio)

• Apple Paddington
• Apple Keylargo

PCI-Bridges

• Apple Uni-North (pchb)
• Apple Uni-North AGP (pchb)
• Apple Uni-North Eth (pchb)
• Motorola MPC106 Host-PCI

Video Cards

• ATI Rage Fury AGP4x
• ATI Mach64 GP

Ethernet

• DEC DECchip 21040 (Tulip) (de)
• Apple GMAC (gm0)
• Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface (ukphy)

SCSI Host Adapters

• Symbios Logic 53c810 (ncr)

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)

Unsupported Hardware:

• Support for older PREP style machines have been removed; lack of availability of the hardware and relatively slow speed compared to more recent machines has contributed to this decision.
• 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

Root Drive:

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.

• 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 Resolution:

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.