--- title: "FreeBSD/sparc64 6.4-RELEASE Hardware Notes" sidenav: download --- ++++

The FreeBSD Documentation Project


Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Supported Systems
2.1 Fully Supported Systems
2.2 Partially Supported Systems
2.3 Unsupported Systems
3 Supported Devices
3.1 Disk Controllers
3.2 Ethernet Interfaces
3.3 Token Ring Interfaces
3.4 FDDI Interfaces
3.5 ATM Interfaces
3.6 Wireless Network Interfaces
3.7 Miscellaneous Networks
3.8 ISDN Interfaces
3.9 Serial Interfaces
3.10 Sound Devices
3.11 Camera and Video Capture Devices
3.12 USB Devices
3.13 IEEE 1394 (Firewire) Devices
3.14 Bluetooth Devices
3.15 Cryptographic Accelerators
3.16 Miscellaneous

1 Introduction

This document contains the hardware compatibility notes for FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE on the UltraSPARC hardware platform (also referred to as FreeBSD/sparc64 6.4-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 UltraSPARC hardware platform. Versions of the hardware compatibility notes for other architectures will differ in some details.


2 Supported Systems

This section describes the systems currently known to be supported by FreeBSD on the UltraSPARC platform. For background information on the various hardware designs see the Sun System Handbook.

SMP is supported on all systems with more than 1 processor.

If you have a system that is not listed here, it may not have been tested with FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE. We encourage you to try it and send a note to the FreeBSD SPARC porting mailing list with your results, including which devices work and which do not.


2.1 Fully Supported Systems

The following systems are fully supported by FreeBSD.


2.2 Partially Supported Systems

The following systems are partially supported by FreeBSD. In particular the onboard scsi controller in sbus systems is not supported.


2.3 Unsupported Systems

The following systems are not supported by FreeBSD. This may be due to lack of processor support (UltraSPARC III), due to a quirk in the system design that makes FreeBSD unstable, or due to lack of support for sufficient onboard devices to make FreeBSD generally useful.


3 Supported Devices

$FreeBSD: releng/6.4/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/hardware/common/dev.sgml 174714 2007-12-17 12:22:05Z bmah $

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. 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 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 amr(4) driver include:

The esp(4) driver provides support for the Qlogic FAS216 and FAS408 SCSI controller chips found in a wide variety of systems and peripheral boards. This includes the Qlogic SCSI cards found in most Sun Ultra 1e and Ultra 2 machines. For Qlogic PCI SCSI host adapters, the isp(4) driver should be used in place of the esp(4) driver.

Cards supported by the isp(4) driver include:

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

The Ultra 320 SCSI controller chips supported by the mpt(4) driver can be found onboard on many systems including:

These systems also contain Integrated Raid Mirroring and Integrated Raid Mirroring Enhanced which this driver also supports. The SAS controller chips are also present on many new AMD/Opteron based systems, like the Sun 4100. Note that this controller can drive both SAS and SATA drives or a mix of them at the same time. The Integrated Raid Mirroring available for these controllers is poorly supported at best. The Fibre Channel controller chipset are supported by a broad variety of speeds and systems. The Apple Fibre Channel HBA is in fact the FC949ES card. This driver also supports target mode for Fibre Channel cards. This support may be enabled by setting the desired role of the core via the LSI Logic firmware utility that establishes what roles the card can take on - no separate compilation is required.

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:

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

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 fxp(4) driver include:

Chips supported by the gem(4) driver include:

The following add-on cards are known to work with the gem(4) driver at this time:

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 re(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL816xS, RTL811xS, and RTL8101E based Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:

Adapters supported by the rl(4) driver include:

The stge(4) driver provides support for various NICs based on the Sundance/Tamarack TC9021 based Gigabit Ethernet controller chips, 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.


3.3 Token Ring Interfaces


3.4 FDDI Interfaces


3.5 ATM Interfaces

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

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


3.6 Wireless Network Interfaces

The ath(4) driver supports all Atheros Cardbus or PCI cards, except those that are based on the AR5005VL chipset. A list of cards that are supported can be found at http://customerproducts.atheros.com/customerproducts/default.asp.

[i386, amd64] Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 MiniPCI network adapter ( ipw(4) driver)

[i386, amd64] Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG/2915ABG MiniPCI and 2225BG PCI network adapters ( iwi(4) driver)


3.7 Miscellaneous Networks


3.8 ISDN Interfaces


3.9 Serial Interfaces

The uart(4) driver supports the following classes of UARTs:


3.10 Sound Devices

The snd_audiocs(4) driver supports the following audio devices:

The snd_es137x(4) driver supports the following sound cards:


3.11 Camera and Video Capture Devices


3.12 USB Devices

The umct(4) driver supports the following adapters:


3.13 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)


3.14 Bluetooth Devices


3.15 Cryptographic Accelerators


3.16 Miscellaneous

OpenFirmware console (ofwcons 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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