NetBSD/alpha _VER runs on the following DEC Alpha platforms: DEC 3000/500-family systems DEC 3000/300-family systems Digital AlphaStation 200, 250, 255, and 400 systems Digital AlphaStation 500 and 600 systems Digital AXPpci systems (including UDB and Multia) EB64+-family systems (including Digital EB64+ and third-party AlphaPC 64 systems) EB164-family systems (including Digital EB164 and third-party AlphaPC 164 systems) Digital AlphaServer 8200 and 8400 systems If your system is not listed here, it is not supported in this release, but may be supported in more current versions of NetBSD. Check the alpha port web pages at for the most recent information on this, or ask on the alpha mailing list, . NetBSD/alpha requires the Digital Unix PALcode, which basically means that you need to have the SRM console installed on your machine. This console can be distinguished from the ARC console (which is used to boot Windows NT) by the fact that it has a command line interface, rather than a menu-driven interface. A basic system will fit on a 200 MB disk (including swap) without too much difficulty, but you will probably want at least 500 MB of disk to have any level of comfort. You will also need at least 32 MB of RAM, and you will probably want more than that if you're running X. We support add-in devices on the PCI, ISA, EISA and TurboChannel buses. Because NetBSD has an extremely machine-independent device driver system, many device drivers are the same as used in other ports that use the same bus. For example, the de network card driver is shared by the i386 and Alpha ports. Some drivers on inspection appear as if they will work on the alpha but have not been tested because that hardware was not available to NetBSD testers; these are marked as `UNTESTED' below. If you have one of these devices, and it does work, please get in touch with and let us know that it works. If it doesn't work, do the same thing and we can probably fix it pretty easily. Supported devices by bus type are: PCI Bus Graphics Adapters VGA-compatible video (pcivga) ZLXp-E1 video (DECchip 21030-based video, tga, NOTE: ZLXp-E2 and ZLXp-E3 boards are not currently supported)) Network Cards DECchip 21x40-family 10 and 100 Mbps Ethernet (de) DEC DEFPA FDDI (fpa) PCI LANCE Ethernet (le, UNTESTED) Efficient Networks ENI-155p ATM (en, UNTESTED) 3Com 3c59x and 3c90x (except 3c906) 10 and 100 Mbps Ethernet (ep) Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100B PCI Ethernet (fxp, UNTESTED) SCSI Controllers Adaptec 294x, 394x, and aic78x0 SCSI (ahc) BusLogic 9xx SCSI (bha, Works on Alpha PC164) Qlogic ISP 10x0-family SCSI (isp) NCR/Symbios 53c8xx-family SCSI (ncr, NCR825 Doesn't always work) Miscellaneous Devices Cyclades Cyclom-Y serial boards (cy, UNTESTED) PCI-PCI bridges (ppb, tested with the DECchip 21050, but should work with all bridges and system firmware revisions that comply with the PCI-PCI bridge specification) ISA Bus Network Cards 3Com 3c509 Ethernet (ep) Miscellaneous Devices PC-style parallel ports (lpt) NS16450 and NS16550 UARTs (com) ISA multi-port 16x50 boards (such as ast, boca--only boca has been tested) EISA Bus Network Cards DEC DEFEA FDDI (fea) 3Com 3c5xx series (ed, UNTESTED) SCSI Controllers Adaptec 274x and aic7770 SCSI (ahc, UNTESTED) BusLogic 7xx SCSI (bha, UNTESTED) Turbochannel Bus Graphics Adapters CFB video (PMAG-BA, cfb) SFB video (PMAGB-BA, sfb) (Note that although these boards are supported by NetBSD/alpha, since there is no keyboard or mouse support available for the TurboChannel systems, they aren't very useful.) Network Cards DEC LANCE Ethernet (PMAD-AA, le, UNTESTED) DEC DEFTA FDDI (PMAF-F, fta) Note that PC-style floppy disk drives are not supported in 1.3, but are supported to some degree in NetBSD-current. Hardware the we do NOT currently support, but get many questions about: Floppy drives (though you can boot the install disk from them). Note that some devices, especially ISA-based devices, have to have certain settings set properly for the install and GENERIC kernels to detect them. (Once installed, you can always rebuild your own kernel to detect them anywhere you wish, of course.) Here is a list of such devices and the necessary settings: Device Name Port IRQ DRQ Misc ------ ---- ---- --- --- ---- Serial ports com0 0x3f8 4 [8250/16450/16550/clones] com1 0x2f8 3 [8250/16450/16550/clones] com2 0x3e8 5 [8250/16450/16550/clones] Parallel ports lpt0 0x378 7 [interrupt-driven or polling] lpt1 0x278 [polling only] lpt2 0x3bc [polling only] AHA-174x SCSI host adapters (in enhanced mode) ahb0 any any any AHA-2X4X or AIC-7XXX-based SCSI host adapters ahc0 any any any Bus Logic BT445, BT74x, or BT9xx SCSI host adapters bha0 0x330 any any bha1 0x334 any any MFM/ESDI/IDE/RLL hard disk controllers wdc0 0x1f0 14 [supports two devices] wdc1 0x170 15 [supports two devices] ATA disks wd0, wd1, ... SCSI disks sd0, sd1, ... SCSI tapes st0, st1, ... SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROMs cd0, cd1, ... For each SCSI and IDE controller found, the SCSI or ATA(PI) devices present on the bus are probed in increasing id order for SCSI and master/slave order for ATA(PI). So the first SCSI drive found will be called sd0, the second sd1, and so on ... 3COM 3x59X or 3COM 3x90X PCI Ethernet boards ep0 any any [you must assign an interrupt in your PCI BIOS, or let it do so for you] Intel EtherExpress 100 Fast Ethernet adapters fxp0 any any [you must assign an interrupt in your PCI BIOS, or let it do so for you]