--- title: "FreeBSD/i386 5.3-RELEASE Hardware Notes" sidenav: download --- ++++

The FreeBSD Documentation Project


Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Supported Processors and Motherboards
3 Supported Devices
3.1 Disk Controllers
3.2 Ethernet Interfaces
3.3 FDDI Interfaces
3.4 ATM Interfaces
3.5 Wireless Network Interfaces
3.6 Miscellaneous Networks
3.7 ISDN Interfaces
3.8 Serial Interfaces
3.9 Audio Devices
3.10 Camera and Video Capture Devices
3.11 USB Devices
3.12 IEEE 1394 (Firewire) Devices
3.13 Bluetooth Devices
3.14 Cryptographic Accelerators
3.15 Miscellaneous

1 Introduction

This document contains the hardware compatibility notes for FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE on the i386 hardware platform (also referred to as FreeBSD/i386 5.3-RELEASE). 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 i386 hardware platform. Versions of the hardware compatibility notes for other architectures will differ in some details.


2 Supported Processors and Motherboards

FreeBSD/i386 runs on a wide variety of ``IBM PC compatible'' machines. Due to the wide range of hardware available for this architecture, it is impossible to exhaustively list all combinations of equipment supported by FreeBSD. Nevertheless, some general guidelines are presented here.

Almost all i386-compatible processors are supported. All Intel processors beginning with the 80386 are supported, including the 80386, 80486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4, and variants thereof, such as the Xeon and Celeron processors. (However, FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE and later no longer support the 80386SX processor.) All i386-compatible AMD processors are also supported, including the Am486, Am5x86, K5, K6 (and variants), Athlon (including Athlon-MP, Athlon-XP, Athlon-4, and Athlon Thunderbird), and Duron processors. The AMD Élan SC520 embedded processor is supported. The Transmeta Crusoe is recognized and supported, as are i386-compatible processors from Cyrix and NexGen.

There is a wide variety of motherboards available for this architecture. Motherboards using the ISA, VLB, EISA, AGP, and PCI expansion busses are well-supported. There is some limited support for the MCA (``MicroChannel'') expansion bus used in the IBM PS/2 line of PCs.

Symmetric multi-processor (SMP) systems are generally supported by FreeBSD, although in some cases, BIOS or motherboard bugs may generate some problems. Perusal of the archives of the FreeBSD symmetric multiprocessing mailing list may yield some clues.

FreeBSD will take advantage of HyperThreading (HTT) support on Intel CPUs that support this feature. A kernel with the options SMP feature enabled will automatically detect the additional logical processors. The default FreeBSD scheduler treats the logical processors the same as additional physical processors; in other words, no attempt is made to optimize scheduling decisions given the shared resources between logical processors within the same CPU. Because this naive scheduling can result in suboptimal performance, under certain circumstances it may be useful to disable the logical processors with the the machdep.hlt_logical_cpus sysctl variable. It is also possible to halt any CPU in the idle loop with the machdep.hlt_cpus sysctl variable. The smp(4) manual page has more details.

FreeBSD will take advantage of Physical Address Extensions (PAE) support on CPUs that support this feature. A kernel with the PAE feature enabled will detect memory above 4 gigabytes and allow it to be used by the system. This feature places constraints on the device drivers and other features of FreeBSD which may be used; consult the pae(4) manpage for more details.

FreeBSD will generally run on i386-based laptops, albeit with varying levels of support for certain hardware features such as sound, graphics, power management, and PCCARD expansion slots. These features tend to vary in idiosyncratic ways between machines, and frequently require special-case support in FreeBSD to work around hardware bugs or other oddities. When in doubt, a search of the archives of the FreeBSD laptop computer mailing list may be useful.

Most modern laptops (as well as many desktops) use the Advanced Configuration and Power Management (ACPI) standard. FreeBSD supports ACPI via the ACPI Component Architecture reference implementation from Intel, as described in the acpi(4) manual page. The use of ACPI causes instabilities on some machines and it may be necessary to disable the ACPI driver, which is normally loaded via a kernel module. This may be accomplished by adding the following line to /boot/device.hints:

hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"

Users debugging ACPI-related problems may find it useful to disable portions of the ACPI functionality. The acpi(4) manual page has more information on how to do this via loader tunables.

ACPI depends on a Differentiated System Descriptor Table (DSDT) provided by each machine's BIOS. Some machines have bad or incomplete DSDTs, which prevents ACPI from functioning correctly. Replacement DSDTs for some machines can be found at the DSDT section of the ACPI4Linux project Web site. FreeBSD can use these DSDTs to override the DSDT provided by the BIOS; see the acpi(4) manual page for more information.


3 Supported Devices

$FreeBSD: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/hardware/common/dev.sgml,v 1.227.2.14.2.1 2004/11/03 00:18:51 simon Exp $

This section describes the devices currently known to be supported by with FreeBSD on the i386 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. Information on specific models of supported devices, controllers, etc. can be found in the manual pages.

Note: The device lists in this document are being generated automatically from FreeBSD manual pages. This means that some devices, which are supported by multiple drivers, may appear multiple times.


3.1 Disk Controllers

IDE/ATA controllers ( ata(4) driver)

The adapters supported by the aic(4) driver include:

The aha(4) driver supports the following SCSI host adapters:

The ahb(4) driver supports the following SCSI host adapters:

The ahc(4) driver supports the following SCSI host adapter chips and SCSI controller cards:

The ahd(4) driver supports the following:

Controllers supported by the aac(4) driver include:

The adv(4) driver supports the following SCSI controllers:

The adw(4) driver supports SCSI controllers including:

The bt(4) driver supports the following BusLogic MultiMaster ``W'', ``C'', ``S'', and ``A'' series and compatible SCSI host adapters:

AMI FastDisk Host Adapters that are true BusLogic MultiMaster clones are also supported by the bt(4) driver.

The dpt(4) driver provides support for the following RAID adapters:

The adapters currently supported by the asr(4) driver include the following:

The amr(4) driver supports the following:

Note: Booting from these controllers is supported. EISA adapters are not supported.

Controllers supported by the mlx(4) driver include:

All major firmware revisions (2.x, 3.x, 4.x and 5.x) are supported, however it is always advisable to upgrade to the most recent firmware available for the controller. Compatible Mylex controllers not listed should work, but have not been verified.

Note: Booting from these controllers is supported. EISA adapters are not supported.

Controllers supported by the mly(4) driver include:

Compatible Mylex controllers not listed should work, but have not been verified.

The twe(4) driver supports the following ATA RAID controllers:

The twa(4) driver supports the following PATA/SATA RAID controllers:

The ncr(4) driver provides support for the following NCR/Symbios SCSI controller chips:

The following add-on boards are known to be supported:

The sym(4) driver provides support for the following Symbios/LSI Logic PCI SCSI controllers:

The SCSI controllers supported by sym(4) can be either embedded on a motherboard, or on one of the following add-on boards:

The following devices are currently supported by the ncv(4) driver:

Controllers supported by the stg(4) driver include:

Note that the Adaptec 2920C is supported by the ahc(4) driver.

Cards supported by the isp(4) driver include:

Controllers supported by the amd(4) driver include:

Controllers supported by the nsp(4) driver include:

Adaptec AIC-7110 Parallel to SCSI interfaces ( vpo(4) driver)

The following controllers are supported by the ida(4) driver:

Controllers supported by the ciss(4) driver include:

Controllers supported by the iir(4) driver include:

The SRCU31 and SRCU31L can be updated via a firmware update available from Intel.

Promise SuperTrak ATA RAID controllers ( pst(4) driver)

The hptmv(4) driver supports the HighPoint RocketRAID 182x SATA controllers.

Controllers supported by the ips(4) driver include:

The following controllers are supported by the mpt(4) driver:

The SCSI controller chips supprted by the mpt(4) driver can be found onboard on many systems including:

SCSI controllers supported by the trm(4) driver include:

For the Tekram DC-310/U and DC-390F/U/UW/U2B/U2W/U3W PCI SCSI host adapters, use the sym(4) driver.

The wds(4) driver supports the WD7000 SCSI controller.

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:



The following device is unmaintained:




3.2 Ethernet Interfaces

Adapters supported by the sf(4) driver include:

The ti(4) driver supports Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Alteon Tigon I and II chips. The ti(4) driver has been tested with the following adapters:

The following adapters should also be supported but have not yet been tested:

The pcn(4) driver supports adapters and embedded controllers based on the AMD PCnet/FAST, PCnet/FAST+, PCnet/FAST III, PCnet/PRO and PCnet/Home Fast Ethernet chips:

The lnc(4) driver supports the following adapters:

Also supported are adapters working with the pcn(4) driver. The lnc(4) driver runs these in compatibility mode, thus the pcn(4) driver should be preferred.

SMC 83c17x (EPIC)-based Ethernet NICs (tx(4) driver)

The ed(4) driver supports the following Ethernet NICs:

C-Bus, ISA, PCI and PC Card devices are supported.

Adapters supported by the rl(4) driver include:

The wb(4) driver supports Winbond W89C840F based Fast Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers including:

The vr(4) driver supports VIA Technologies Rhine I, Rhine II, and Rhine III based Fast Ethernet adapters including:

The sis(4) driver supports Silicon Integrated Systems SiS 900 and SiS 7016 based Fast Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers, as well as Fast Ethernet adapters based on the National Semiconductor DP83815 (MacPhyter) chip. Supported adapters include:

The nge(4) driver supports National Semiconductor DP83820 and DP83821 based Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:

The ste(4) driver supports Sundance Technologies ST201 based Fast Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers including:

Adapters supported by the sk(4) driver include:

The tl(4) driver supports Texas Instruments ThunderLAN based Ethernet and Fast Ethernet adapters including a large number of Compaq PCI Ethernet adapters. Also supported are:

The tl(4) driver also supports the built-in Ethernet adapters of various Compaq Prosignia servers and Compaq Deskpro desktop machines including:

The dc(4) driver provides support for the following chipsets:

The following NICs are known to work with the dc(4) driver at this time:

Adapters supported by the aue(4) driver include:

The cue(4) driver supports CATC USB-EL1210A based USB Ethernet adapters including:

The kue(4) driver supports Kawasaki LSI KL5KLUSB101B based USB Ethernet adapters including:

The axe(4) driver supports ASIX Electronics AX88172 based USB Ethernet adapters including:

The rue(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8150 based USB Ethernet adapters including:

The udav(4) driver supports the following adapters:

Adapters supported by the de(4) driver include:

Controllers and cards supported by the fe(4) driver include:

Adapters supported by the fxp(4) driver include:

The ex(4) driver supports the following Ethernet adapters:

The ie(4) driver provides supports the following 8 and 16bit ISA Ethernet cards that are based on the Intel i82586 chip:

The ep(4) driver supports Ethernet adapters based on the 3Com 3C5x9 Etherlink III Parallel Tasking chipset, including:

The el(4) driver supports the 3Com 3c501 8bit ISA Ethernet card.

The xl(4) driver supports the following hardware:

Both the 3C656 family of CardBus cards and the 3C556 family of MiniPCI cards have a built-in proprietary modem. Neither the xl(4) driver nor any other driver supports this modem.

The vx(4) driver supports the following cards:

Crystal Semiconductor CS89x0-based NICs (cs(4) driver)

The sn(4) driver supports SMC9xxx based ISA and PCMCIA cards including:

The xe(4) driver supports the following cards:

Other similar devices using the same hardware may also be supported.

Adapters supported by the lge(4) driver include:

The txp(4) driver supports the following cards:

The bge(4) driver provides support for various NICs based on the Broadcom BCM570x family of Gigabit Ethernet controller chips, including the following:

The em(4) driver supports Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Intel 82540, 82541PI, 82542, 82543, 82544, 82546, 82546EB and 82547 controller chips:

The gx(4) driver supports Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Intel 82542 and 82543 controller chips:

The hme(4) driver supports the on-board Ethernet interfaces of many Sun UltraSPARC workstation and server models. Cards supported by the hme(4) driver include:

The my(4) driver provides support for various NICs based on the Myson chipset. Supported models include:

Broadcom BCM4401 based Fast Ethernet adapters ( bfe(4) driver)

The re(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL8169S and RTL8110S based Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:

The ixgb(4) driver supports the following cards:


3.3 FDDI Interfaces

DEC DEFPA PCI ( fpa(4) driver)

DEC DEFEA EISA ( fpa(4) driver)


3.4 ATM Interfaces

Midway-based ATM interfaces (en(4) driver)

FORE Systems, Inc. PCA-200E ATM PCI Adapters (hfa and fatm(4) drivers)

IDT NICStAR 77201/211-based ATM Adapters ( idt(4) driver)

FORE Systems, Inc. HE155 and HE622 ATM interfaces ( hatm(4) driver)

IDT77252-based ATM cards ( patm(4) driver)


3.5 Wireless Network Interfaces

NCR / AT&T / Lucent Technologies WaveLan T1-speed ISA/radio LAN cards (wl(4) driver)

Lucent Technologies WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11b wireless network adapters and workalikes using the Lucent Hermes, Intersil PRISM-II, Intersil PRISM-2.5, Intersil Prism-3, and Symbol Spectrum24 chipsets (wi(4) driver)

Cisco/Aironet 802.11b wireless adapters (an(4) driver)

Raytheon Raylink 2.4GHz wireless adapters ( ray(4) driver)

Cards supported by the awi(4) driver include:

The original Xircom Netwave AirSurfer is supported by the cnw(4) driver.

Cards supported by the cnw(4) driver include:

The following cards are among those supported by the ath(4) driver:

An up to date list can be found at http://customerproducts.atheros.com/customerproducts.


3.6 Miscellaneous Networks

The cx(4) driver supports the following cards:

The cp(4) driver supports the following models of Tau-PCI WAN adapters:

The ctau(4) driver supports the following cards:

Granch SBNI12 point-to-point communications adapters ( sbni(4) driver)

Granch SBNI16 SHDSL modems ( sbsh(4) driver)

The cm(4) driver supports the following card models:


3.7 ISDN Interfaces

AcerISDN P10 ISA PnP (experimental)

Asuscom ISDNlink 128K ISA

ASUSCOM P-IN100-ST-D (and other Winbond W6692-based cards)

AVM



Creatix



Compaq Microcom 610 ISDN (Compaq series PSB2222I) ISA PnP

Dr. Neuhaus Niccy Go@ and compatibles

Dynalink IS64PPH and IS64PPH+

Eicon Diehl DIVA 2.0 and 2.02

ELSA



ITK ix1 Micro ( < V.3, non-PnP version )

Sedlbauer Win Speed

Siemens I-Surf 2.0

TELEINT ISDN SPEED No.1 (experimental)

Teles



Traverse Technologies NETjet-S PCI

USRobotics Sportster ISDN TA intern

Winbond W6692 based PCI cards


3.8 Serial Interfaces

``PC standard'' 8250, 16450, and 16550-based serial ports ( sio(4) driver)

AST 4 port serial card using shared IRQ

ARNET serial cards (ar(4) driver)



Boca multi-port serial cards



Comtrol Rocketport card (rp(4) driver)

Cyclades Cyclom-Y serial board (cy(4) driver)

STB 4 port card using shared IRQ

DigiBoard intelligent serial cards (digi driver)

PCI-Based multi-port serial boards ( puc(4) driver)



SDL Communication serial boards



Specialix SI/XIO/SX multiport serial cards, with both the older SIHOST2.x and the new ``enhanced'' (transputer based, aka JET) host cards (ISA, EISA and PCI are supported) (si(4) driver)


3.9 Audio Devices

Advance ( sbc(4) driver)



CMedia sound chips



Crystal Semiconductor ( csa(4) driver)



ENSONIQ ( pcm(4) driver)



The snd_ess(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

ESS



ForteMedia fm801

Gravis ( gusc(4) driver)



Intel 443MX, 810, 815, and 815E integrated sound devices ( pcm(4) driver)

MSS/WSS Compatible DSPs ( pcm(4) driver)

NeoMagic 256AV/ZX ( pcm(4) driver)

OPTi 931/82C931 ( pcm(4) driver)

S3 Sonicvibes

Creative Technologies SoundBlaster series ( sbc(4) driver)



Creative Technologies Sound Blaster Live! series (emu10k1 driver)

Trident 4DWave DX/NX ( pcm(4) driver)

VIA Technologies VT82C686A

Yamaha




3.10 Camera and Video Capture Devices

Brooktree Bt848/849/878/879-based frame grabbers ( bktr(4) driver)

Connectix QuickCam


3.11 USB Devices

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.

Note: USB Bluetooth adapters can be found in Bluetooth section.

The ohci(4) driver supports all OHCI v1.0 compliant controllers including:

The uhci(4) driver supports all UHCI v1.1 compliant controllers including:

USB 2.0 controllers using the EHCI interface ( ehci(4) driver)

Hubs

Keyboards ( ukbd(4) driver)

Miscellaneous



The following devices are supported by the urio(4) driver:

Devices supported by the umodem(4) driver include:

Mice ( ums(4) driver)

The ulpt(4) driver provides support for USB printers and parallel printer conversion cables, including the following:

The ubsa(4) driver supports the following adapters:

The ubser(4) driver provides support the BWCT console management serial adapters.

The uftdi(4) driver supports the following adapters:

The uplcom(4) driver supports the following adapters:

The umct(4) driver supports the following adapters:

The following devices are supported by the uscanner(4) driver:

Storage ( umass(4) driver)



Audio Devices ( uaudio(4) driver)

The uvisor(4) driver supports the following devices:


3.12 IEEE 1394 (Firewire) Devices

The fwohci(4) driver provides support for PCI/CardBus firewire interface cards. The driver supports the following IEEE 1394 OHCI chipsets:

Serial Bus Protocol 2 (SBP-2) storage devices ( sbp(4) driver)


3.13 Bluetooth Devices

PCCARD Host Controllers ( ng_bt3c(4) driver)



The ng_ubt(4) driver supports all Bluetooth USB devices that conform with the Bluetooth specification v1.1, including:


3.14 Cryptographic Accelerators

The hifn(4) driver supports various cards containing the Hifn 7751, 7951, 7811, 7955, and 7956 chipsets, such as:

The safe(4) driver supports cards containing any of the following chips:

The ubsec(4) driver supports cards containing any of the following chips:


3.15 Miscellaneous

FAX-Modem/PCCARD



Floppy drives ( fdc(4) driver)

VGA-compatible video cards ( vga(4) driver)

Note: Information regarding specific video cards and compatibility with XFree86 can be found at http://www.xfree86.org/.



Keyboards including:



Pointing devices including:

Note: moused(8) has more information on using pointing devices with FreeBSD. Information on using pointing devices with XFree86 can be found at http://www.xfree86.org/.



``PC standard'' parallel ports ( ppc(4) driver)

PC-compatible joysticks ( joy(4) driver)

PHS Data Communication Card/PCCARD



Xilinx XC6200-based reconfigurable hardware cards compatible with the HOT1 from Virtual Computers (xrpu driver).


This file, and other release-related documents, can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/.

For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.

For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.

++++