--- title: "FreeBSD/pc98 5.3-RELEASE Hardware Notes" sidenav: download --- ++++

The FreeBSD Documentation Project


Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Supported Systems
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 NEC PC-98x1 hardware platform (also referred to as FreeBSD/pc98 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 NEC PC-98x1 hardware platform. Versions of the hardware compatibility notes for other architectures will differ in some details.


2 Supported Systems

NEC PC-9801/9821 series with almost all i386-compatible processors, including 80386, 80486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, and variants. All i386-compatible processors by AMD, Cyrix, IBM, and IDT are also supported.

NEC FC-9801/9821 series, and NEC SV-98 series (both of them are compatible with PC-9801/9821 series) should be supported.

EPSON PC-386/486/586 series, which are compatible with NEC PC-9801 series are supported.

High-resolution mode is not supported. NEC PC-98XA/XL/RL/XL^2, and NEC PC-H98 series are supported in normal (PC-9801 compatible) mode only.

Although there are some multi-processor systems (such as Rs20/B20), SMP-related features of FreeBSD are not supported yet.

PC-9801/9821 standard bus (called C-Bus), PC-9801NOTE expansion bus (110pin), and PCI bus are supported. New Extend Standard Architecture (NESA) bus (used in PC-H98, SV-H98, and FC-H98 series) is not supported.


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 NEC PC-98x1 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)

IDE/ATA controllers (wdc driver)



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

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

The ct(4) driver supports the following adapters:

NEC PC-9801-55, 92 and their compatible C-Bus SCSI interfaces (bs driver)



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

The adw(4) driver supports SCSI controllers including:

The amr(4) driver supports the following:

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:

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:

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:




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

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:

The snc(4) driver supports the following cards:

The snc(4) driver also includes support for the National Semiconductor NS46C46 as 64 * 16 bits Microwave Serial EEPROM.

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:

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


3.3 FDDI Interfaces

DEC DEFPA PCI ( 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

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:


3.6 Miscellaneous Networks

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


3.7 ISDN Interfaces


3.8 Serial Interfaces

Internel serial interfaces ( sio(4) driver)



NEC PC-9861K, PC-9801-101 and Midori-Denshi MDC-926Rs ( sio(4) driver)



NEC PC-9801-120 ( sio(4) driver)

Note: "flags 0x11000000" is necessary in kernel configuration.

Microcore MC-16550, MC-16550II, MC-RS98 ( sio(4) driver)

Note: "flags 0x14000?01" is necessary in kernel configuration.

Media Intelligent RSB-2000, RSB-3000 and AIWA B98-02 ( sio(4) driver)

Note: "flags 0x15000?01" is necessary in kernel configuration.

Media Intelligent RSB-384 ( sio(4) driver)

Note: "flags 0x16000001" is necessary in kernel configuration.

I-O DATA RSA-98III ( sio(4) driver)

Note: "flags 0x18000?01" is necessary in kernel configuration.

Hayes ESP98 ( sio(4) driver)

Note: "options COM_ESP" and "flags 0x19000000" are necessary in kernel configuration.


3.9 Audio Devices

The snd_ess(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

NEC PC-9801-73, 86 and compatibles (nss driver)



NEC X-MATE, CanBe, ValueStar internal (mss driver)

Creative Technologies SoundBlaster(98) (sb(4) driver)

I-O DATA CD-BOX (sb(4) driver)

MPU-401 and compatible interfaces (mpu driver)




3.10 Camera and Video Capture Devices

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


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


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)

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-9821 standard'' parallel ports ( ppc(4) driver)

Joystick port of SoundBlaster(98) ( joy(4) driver)

PHS Data Communication Card/PCCARD



Power Management Controller of NEC PC-98 Note (pmc 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>.

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