Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 by The FreeBSD Documentation Project
This document contains the hardware compatibility notes for FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT on the UltraSparc hardware platform (also referred to as FreeBSD/sparc64 5.0-CURRENT). It lists devices known to work on this platform, as well as some notes on boot-time kernel customization that may be useful when attempting to configure support for new devices.
Note: This document includes information specific to the UltraSparc hardware platform. Versions of the hardware compatibility notes for other architectures will differ in some details.
Additions, corrections and constructive criticism are invited. In particular information on system quirks is more than welcome.
This document tries to provide a starting point for those who want to run FreeBSD on an UltraSparc-based machine. It is aimed at providing background information on the various hardware designs. It is not a replacement for the systems manuals.
The information is structured as follows:
general hardware requirements to run FreeBSD on sparc64
system specific information for each of the systems/boards supported by FreeBSD;
information on expansion boards for FreeBSD, including things that differ from what is in the generic supported hardware list.
FreeBSD/sparc64 requires a PCI based UltraSparc system. Currently, the following systems are know to work to varying degrees :
Sun Ultra 5 workstations
Sun Ultra 10 workstations
Sun Ultra 60 workstations
Sun Blade 100 workstations
Below is an overview of the hardware that FreeBSD runs on. This list will definitely grow, a look in /sys/sparc64/conf/GENERIC can be enlightening.
UltraSPARC Ultra5/10-family systems include the following hardware:
UltraSPARC IIi CPU
A total of 3 PCI busses
Built-in network (hme compatible) interface
Built-in PCI-IDE controller
Two PC-AT style `com' ports for the mouse and keyboard
Floppy driver controller
Siemens SAB82532 dual-channel serial ports for ttya and ttyb
One CS4231 audio device
One PC-AT style parallel port
Sun `ffb' frame buffer (Ultra10 only)
Sun Blade 100 workstations include the following hardware:
UltraSPARC IIe CPU
A total of 3 PCI busses
Built-in network (hme compatible) interface
Built-in USB and Firewireports unsupported
Built-in PCI-IDE controller
Two PC-AT style `com' ports for the mouse and keyboard
Floppy driver controller
Siemens SAB82532 dual-channel serial ports for ttya and ttyb
One CS4231 audio device
One PC-AT style parallel port
Built-in PGX64 (ATI) graphics
A word of caution: the installed base for FreeBSD/sparc64 is not nearly as large as for FreeBSD/Intel. This means that the enormous variation of PCI/ISA expansion cards out there has much less chance of having been tested on alpha than on Intel. This is not to imply they are doomed to fail, just that the chance of running into something never tested before is much higher. GENERIC contains things that are known to work on sparc64 only.
The PCI bus is fully supported. SBUS is not currently supported in FreeBSD.
1.44 Mbyte floppy drives are supported.
ATA and ATAPI (IDE) devices are supported via the ata(4) driver framework.
There is full SCSI support via the CAM layer for Adaptec 2940x (AIC7xxx chip-based), and NCR/Symbios. Be aware that SCSI cards must contain Sun FCODE in order to use them as a boot device from OpenBoot.
If you want to boot your sparc64 over the Ethernet you will obviously need an Ethernet card that the OpenBoot console recognizes.
The ``PC standard'' serial ports found on most newer Sun workstations are supported.
This document is based on the FreeBSD/Alpha and NetBSD/sparc64 documents. Much information was also gathered from the Sun web site.
This section describes the devices currently known to be supported by with FreeBSD on the UltraSparc platform. Other configurations may also work, but simply have not been tested yet. Feedback, updates, and corrections to this list are encouraged.
Where possible, the drivers applicable to each device or class of devices is listed. If the driver in question has a manual page in the FreeBSD base distribution (most should), it is referenced here.
IDE/ATA controllers ( ata(4) driver)
Acerlabs Aladdin
AMD 756, 766
CMD 646, 648 ATA66, and 649 ATA100
Cypress 82C693
Cyrex 5530
HighPoint HPT366 ATA66, HPT370 ATA100, HPT372 ATA133
Intel PIIX, PIIX3, PIIX4
Intel ICH ATA66, ICH2 ATA100, ICH3 ATA100
Promise ATA100 OEM chip (pdc20265)
Promise Fasttrak-33, -66, -100, -100 TX2/TX4
Promise Ultra-33, -66, -100
ServerWorks ROSB4 ATA33
SiS 530, 540, 620
SiS 630, 633, 635, 730, 733, 735
SiS 5591
VIA 82C586 ATA33, 82C596 ATA66, 82C686a ATA66, 82C686b ATA100
Tekram DC390 and DC390T controllers, maybe other cards based on the AMD 53c974 as well ( amd(4) driver)
With all supported SCSI controllers, full support is provided for SCSI-I, SCSI-II, and SCSI-III peripherals, including hard disks, optical disks, tape drives (including DAT, 8mm Exabyte, Mammoth, and DLT), medium changers, processor target devices and CD-ROM drives. WORM devices that support CD-ROM commands are supported for read-only access by the CD-ROM drivers (such as cd(4)). WORM/CD-R/CD-RW writing support is provided by cdrecord(1), which is a part of the sysutils/cdrtools port in the Ports Collection.
The following CD-ROM type systems are supported at this time:
SCSI interface (also includes ProAudio Spectrum and SoundBlaster SCSI) ( cd(4))
ATAPI IDE interface ( acd(4))
CONTEC C-NET(PC)C PCMCIA Ethernet
Fujitsu MBH10303, MBH10302 Ethernet PCMCIA
Fujitsu Towa LA501 Ethernet
Fujitsu FMV-J182, FMV-J182A
RATOC REX-5588, REX-9822, REX-4886, and REX-R280
Eiger Labs EPX-10BT
HITACHI HT-4840-11
NextCom J Link NC5310
TDK LAK-CD021, LAK-CD021A, LAK-CD021BX
A range of USB peripherals are supported; devices known to work are listed in this section. Owing to the generic nature of most USB devices, with some exceptions any device of a given class will be supported, even if not explicitly listed here.
Note: USB Ethernet adapters can be found in the section listing Ethernet interfaces.
Hubs
Andromeda hub
MacAlly self powered hub (4 ports)
NEC hub
This file, and other release-related documents, can be downloaded from ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/.
For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
All users of FreeBSD 5-CURRENT should subscribe to the <current@FreeBSD.org> mailing list.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.