Hardware compatibility list

Hardware compatibility list

[Vijay]

Added: Systems - Systems/setups that work with plan 9.

The purpose of this list is to maintain a database of hardware that is
known to work with plan 9.  This should make life easier for those
people contemplating the purchase of new hardware.  Most of this list
is taken directly from what Forsyth sent me.  Please do not deluge him
with mail, reply to me and I'll try to set up a mechanism to
distribute this stuff.

 The list is starting out for the most selfish of reasons, since I am
in the market for some hardware to run plan 9, I thought it would be a
good idea to find out what to get.  This list will concentrate mostly
on the 386/486 clone hardware.  While the 386/486 machines are looked
upon with derision, they provide the cheapest hardware to run plan 9.
However, most of the hardware is only tested with, and comes with
drivers for, DOS and Windows, and thus may not work with plan 9.  This
list details the stuff that works with plan 9.

BeginBlurb:  
Plan 9 on a Mac.  No more futzing around.
I could deal with plan9 running on the new cheap 68040 Quadra's or
the LC's.
End Blurb.

Note: Our paperwork still hasn't arrived yet.  And we even have the
hardware available, which I think is a first in the history of our
school.

Contributors:

Most of this hardware list comes from forsyth@minster.york.ac.uk who
has done yeoman work to contributing to this list.  Actually, come to
think of it, his is about the only contribution ;)

Here is the list of hardware that will work with plan 9.  Other
hardware may work with plan 9, but this list will only list stuff that
is known to work or stuff that I need confirmation on.

-----------------------------------------------------
Bus:
	ISA
	VESA
	EISA (may work with ISA Cards, need confirmation)
-----------------------------------------------------
CPU:
	Intel
	AMD - To be tested by Forsyth
	Cyrix - Ditto
	IBM SLC - Has been tested and is known to work.
------------------------------------------------------
Video Cards:

This is the trickiest part.  SVGA cards all have different ways of
configuring and operating high-resolution modes (higher than 640x480
VGA).

	ET4000 SVGA cards work.
	S3 911 cards work, with some changes
		to devvga.c and lib/vga.  The SVGA
		mode is, ``horrible, just horrible.''
	
	Paradise cards (reportedly) work.
	Diamond Stealth Pro cards work, with some changes
		to devvga.c and lib/vga.  This is from
		Gary Capell.

------------------------------------------------------
Ethernet cards:

	WD
	SMC
	NE2000 clones (Reset port address it uses
		       might not work on some clones)
	3Com 3C509 Etherlink III (need to get some fixes
		       to use the driver under very heavy
		       loads)
	3Com 3C503 -- Avoid this one


------------------------------------------------------------
Hard Disk Controllers:

	Ultrastor 14F SCSI (driver is available by ftp)
	Adaptec 1542B/Buslogic 542B (driver is available,
		but hasn't been used very much)
	Forsyth has added the driver for the Ultrastor 14F.
	He has used it on both cpu and terminal machines,
	and also on the file server, running Fujitsu 2624FA
	disks, Seagate 3283N and Sun CDROM drives.

	Standard IDE controllers should work.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Memory:

	8-16 megs should be adequate.  More is better.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Modems:

	High speed modems will work but the kernel does not take
	advantage of the FIFO's in the 16550 UARTS.  Forsyth can
	supply the diffs and the appropriate changes that will work
	for `hayes', which work fine upto 38400.
	
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Diskettes:

	Stick with 3.5" 1.44 meg or 5.25".  Plan 9 does not
	work too well with 2.88 meg 3.5".

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Disks:

The pc system on the distribution (Jan 1993 version) supports
IDE disks.  The IDE driver has a bug in it that causes it to fail
on very old Seagate 42 Meg drives (fixed by Forsyth).  Modern IDE
drives work just fine.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Systems:

Forsyth has gotten plan 9 running on an IBM 486SLC2/66 (IBM Path
chipset) ISA motherboard.  This chipset is IBM's own and the CPU is
not Intel's.  The only trick is that you need to select the Fast mode
of the A20 Gate option in the BIOS options.  Plan 9 doesn't run long
with the `Normal' A20 setting.  Also set the OS/2 option as the
motherboard manual suggests.  Forsyth couldn't figure out what it
does, but it is probably a good idea to do it.  He is currently
running a domain name service on this machine.

:
Stephen Gallimore has the following setup:

Elonex 486/33 8MB RAM, SMC Combo Ethernet card, 210 MB IDE drive.
Headland (Video 7) local bus SVGA.  There are some problems with
kernel crashes on this setup and the video is a bit suspect (pvga/nec4
800x600 setup is being used, this gives the wrong aspect for the
monitor).  Needs a proper vga database entry for the card.  This setup
is using an SGI 210/VGX as the fileserver over u9fs, although the
local disk is being used as well.

:

Bernd Waldbauer has plan 9 running on a standard 386DX box, with a
noname ET4000 and an SMC Ethernet card.  He gets 1024x768 on an EIZO
F550i.

---


This is the list as it stands.  If you have plan 9 running on
different hardware, please send me details.

War stories welcomed, to go into the war stories list. I presently
have Forsyth's war story. More input welcomed.  I will be looking at
putting this stuff up for anon ftp when I have sufficient volume.  If
there is sufficient interest, I'll post up the war stories that I
have.

--
Vijay Gill                         |The (paying) customer is always right.
wrath@cs.umbc.edu                  |                  - Piercarlo Grandi
vijay@gl.umbc.edu                  | Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get
These are my opinions only.        | sucked into jet engines.