OpenBSD/powerpc

Status:

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!

As such, this is still rather preliminary and should not be considered finished. The port is still not fully stable, but is now running well enough that is is reasonable to do system development. Hopefully, all stablity problem will be worked on and this will become a reasonably useable port. However, if you have PowerPC hardware we would like to know if it at least boots the install floppy.

The following processors are supported: 603, 603e, 604, 604ev.

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:

• Motorola machines with OpenFirmware (PPC1bug firmware is known not to work): (Machines with 603* processors and some version of Motorola openfirmware are known to not work)
  • Series E
  • RiscPC
  • Pro2000
  • Pro3000
  • Pro4000 (* might not work due to IRQ problem)
• V-I
  • Power4e boards.

Untested hardware (MAY work -- please mail with results):

• Firepower machines
• Motorola Net4000
• Motorola Net6000
  • None known to work.

Machines that DO NOT WORK.

• IBM machines.
• PPCP class machines.
• Apple PowerMac systems with a 601 processor or lack OpenFirmware will never work.
• Apple PowerMac systems with at least a 603 processor and OpenFirmware. The Apple implementation of OpenFirmware does not support loading of ELF executables (like the boot-blocks for this port). This needs a workaround.

History:

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.

Contact Theo de Raadt or Dale Rahn or Allen Briggs (for Apple hardware) if you are interested in working with other people on this, or need more information.