NetBSD/distrib/notes/mac68k/hardware

.\"	$NetBSD: hardware,v 1.15 1999/05/07 03:30:44 ender Exp $	
NetBSD/mac68k \*V runs on several of the older Macintosh computers.
About 4MB of RAM might be sufficient to boot, and the system can probably
be squeezed onto a 40MB hard disk by leaving off an unnecessary set or two.
To actually do much compiling or anything more interesting than booting, at
least 8MB of RAM and more disk space is recommended. About 95MB will be
necessary to install all of the
.Nx \*V
binary system distribution
sets (note that this does not count swap space!). An additional 30MB or so
is needed for the binary X11 distribution sets. Much more disk space is
required to install the source and objects as well (at least another 300MB).
.Ss2 Supported models:
.Pp
.Bl -bullet -compact
.It
Mac II, IIx, IIcx, SE/30, IIci, IIsi, IIvx, IIvi,
.It
Performa 400/405/410/430, Performa 450, Performa 460/466/467,
.It
Performa 520, Performa 550/560, Performa 600,
.It
LC II, LC III, LC III+, LC 520, LC 550,
.It
MacTV,
.It
Centris 650,
.It
Quadra 610, Quadra 630, Quadra 650, Quadra 700, Quadra 800,
.It
Quadra/Centris 660AV, Quadra 840AV
.El
.Ss2 Supported\ devices\ on\ all\ of\ the\ above\ systems\ include:
.Pp
.Bl -bullet -compact
.It
Onboard SCSI bus and most SCSI tapes, hard drives, and CD-ROMs
.It
Internal sound--enough to beep on some machines, anyway
.It
Most basic NuBus video cards (there have been some
problems with some 24-bit color cards and with most
QuickDraw acclerators)
.It
Both internal serial ports
.It
ADB keyboards and mice (both Apple and a number of third party
multi-button mice and trackballs are supported)
.It
Ethernet cards based on the National Semiconductor 8390 and the
SONIC (DP83932) chips
(Asante, Apple, and a few others--problems still
with Ethernet and many NuBus video cards)
.It
Onboard Ethernet based on the SONIC chip for Quadra-series Macs
.It
Onboard Ethernet based on the MACE (Am79C940) chip for the Quadra
AV-series Macs
.It
Comm-slot Ethernet should be working for most machines/cards
.El
.Pp
If your 68030 system is not listed above, it may be because of a problem
with accessing onboard video, and it may still work with a serial console.
Some of the known ones in this category:
.Pp
.Bl -bullet -compact
.It
Classic-series Macs 
.It
PowerBook 100-series and Duo-series Macs
.El
.Pp
If your 68LC040 system is not listed above, it is due to a problem with
floating point emulation (FPE) for this type of processor. Machines in
this category include:
.Pp
.Bl -bullet -compact
.It
Newer LC-series machines
.It
Newer Performa-series machines
.It
Some PowerBook 500-series Macs
.El
.Ss2 What\ isn't\ supported,\ but\ often\ asked\ about:
.Bl -hang
.It Em Macintosh IIfx:
This machine has unusual custom chips for the
ADB and serial interfaces which make support for it
difficult. Work is in progress on this, though.
.It Em Quadra 900/950:
These machines have I/O processor chips for their
ADB interfaces similar to those used in the IIfx and thus
face similar support problems.
.It Em PowerPC-based Macs:
This is a separate effort from the mac68k port. PowerMacs
use hardware that is often fairly different from that of
the mac68k port.  If you are interested in this, you might
want to take a look at the new NetBSD/macppc port:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/index.html
.El
.Pp
Known hardware issues with this release:
.Bl -hang
.It Em Real Time Clock:
Due to oddities of the Macintosh hardware
interrupt priority scheme, NetBSD/mac68k keeps very poor
time. Under a high interrupt load (e.g. SCSI or serial
port activity) , a machine can lose several minutes per
hour. A consequence of this problem is that attempting to
run xntpd is rather pointless unless you periodically call
ntpdate.
.It Em SCSI difficulties:
The NetBSD/mac68k SCSI drivers are not quite as
robust as their MacOS counterparts. Symptoms of these
problems are that some SCSI disks will not work under
NetBSD that work fine under MacOS. Other problems include
occasional filesystem corruption with some types of drives
and the general unreliability of removable SCSI media.
Keep in mind that there are no clear patterns with these
problems, and they do not appear to affect the majority of
users.
.El