Issues of hardware compatibility are among the most
troublesome in the computer industry today and FreeBSD is by
no means immune to trouble. In this respect, FreeBSD's
advantage of being able to run on inexpensive commodity PC
hardware is also its liability when it comes to support for
the amazing variety of components on the market. While it
would be impossible to provide a exhaustive listing of
hardware that FreeBSD supports, this section serves as a
catalog of the device drivers included with FreeBSD and the
hardware each drivers supports. Where possible and
appropriate, notes about specific products are included.
As FreeBSD is a volunteer project without a funded testing
department, we depend on you, the user, for much of the
information contained in this catalog. If you have direct
experience of hardware that does or does not work with
FreeBSD, please let us know by sending e-mail to
doc@freebsd.org. Questions about supported hardware
should be directed to questions@freebsd.org (see
for more
information). When submitting information or asking a
question, please remember to specify exactly what version of
FreeBSD you are using and include as many details of your
hardware as possible.
Sample Configurations
The following list of sample hardware configurations by no means
constitutes an endorsement of a given hardware vendor or product by
The FreeBSD Project. This information is provided only as a public
service and merely catalogs some of the experiences that various individuals
have had with different hardware combinations. Your mileage may vary.
Slippery when wet. Beware of dog.
Jordan's Picks
I have had fairly good luck building workstation and server
configurations with the following components. I can't guarantee that
you will too, nor that any of the companies here will remain "best buys"
forever. I will try, when I can, to keep this list up-to-date but
cannot obviously guarantee that it will be at any given time.
Motherboards
The
motherboard appears to be a good choice for mid-to-high range Pentium
server and workstation systems. If you're really looking for performance,
be also sure to get the . I feel that it's worth
the extra cost. If you're looking for a 486 class motherboard, you might
also investigate ASUS's offering.
NOTE: The Intel chip-set based motherboards do not offer memory
parity logic, making it almost impossible to detect when a memory error
has occurred. Those wishing to build highly fault-tolerant systems may
therefore want to wait for Intel's newest generation of motherboards
based on the Orion chip-set or investigate ASUS's SiS chip-set based
motherboard, the . I have no personal experience with this
motherboard and have heard mixed reports - some say it's a fine MB, others
say that it's measurably slower than the Triton. The only undisputed
advantage it offers is being available now.
Disk Controllers
This one is a bit trickier, and while I used to recommend the
controllers
unilaterally for everything from ISA to PCI, now I tend to lean
towards the
1542CF for ISA, Buslogic Bt747c for EISA and Adaptec 2940 for PCI.
Disk drives
In this particular game of Russian roulette, I'll make few specific
recommendations except to say "SCSI over IDE whenever you can afford it."
Even in small desktop configurations, SCSI often makes more sense since it
allows you to easily migrate drives from server to desktop as falling drive
prices make it economical to do so. If you have more than one machine
to administer then think of it not simply as storage, think of it as a
food chain!
I do not currently see SCSI WIDE drives as a necessary expense unless
you're putting together an NFS or NEWS server that will be doing a lot
of multiuser disk I/O.
CDROM drives
My SCSI preferences extend to SCSI CDROM drives as well, and the
XM-3501B (now
released in a caddy-less model called the XM-5401B) drive has always
performed well for me. Generally speaking, most SCSI CDROM drives I've
seen have been of pretty solid construction (probably because they don't
occupy the lower end of the market, due to their higher price) and you
probably won't go wrong with an HP or NEC SCSI CDROM drive either.
Tape drives
I've had pretty good luck with both
from and
drives from .
For backup purposes, I'd have to give the higher recommendation to the
Exabyte due to the more robust nature (and higher storage capacity) of
8mm tape.
Video Cards
If you can also afford to buy a commercial X server for US$99 from
then I
can heartily recommend the card. If free X servers are more to your
liking, you certainly can't go wrong with one of cards - their S3 Vision 868 and 968 based cards
(the 9FX series) are pretty fast cards as well, and are supported by
's S3 server.
Monitors
I have had very good luck with the , as have I with
the Viewsonic offering in the same (trinitron) tube. For larger than
17", all I can recommend at the time of this writing is to not spend
any less than U.S. $2,500 for a 21" monitor if that's what you really
need. There are good monitors available in the >=20" range and there
are also cheap monitors in the >=20" range. Unfortunately, none are
both cheap and good!
Networking
I can recommend the
Ultra 16 controller for any ISA application and the SMC EtherPower
or Compex ENET32 cards for any serious PCI based networking. Both of
the PCI cards are based around DEC's DC21041 Ethernet controller
chip and other cards using it, such as the Zynx ZX342 or DEC DE435,
will generally work as well.
Serial
If you're looking for high-speed serial networking solutions, then
makes the series, with drivers now in
FreeBSD-current. also manufactures a board with T1/E1
capabilities, using software they provide.
Multiport card options are somewhat more numerous, though it has to be
said that FreeBSD's support for 's products is probably the tightest, primarily as a result
of that company's committment to making sure that we are adequately supplied
with evaluation boards and technical specs. I've heard that the Cyclom-16Ye
offers the best price/performance, though I've not checked the prices lately.
Other multiport cards I've heard good things about are the BOCA and AST
cards, and apparently offers an unofficial driver for their
cards at location.
Audio
I currently use the
Ultrasound MAX due to its high sound quality and full-duplex audio
capabilities (dual DMA channels). Support for Windows NT and OS/2 is
fairly anemic, however, so I'm not sure that I can recommend it as an
all-around card for a machine that will be running both FreeBSD and NT
or OS/2. In such a scenario, I might recommend the AWE32 instead.
Video
For video capture, there's really only once choice - the
card. FreeBSD also supports the older video spigot card from
Creative Labs, but those are getting somewhat difficult to find
and the Meteor is a more current generation frame-grabber with
a higher-speed PCI interface. I use one for broadcasting video
on the MBONE and it works quite well!
Core/ProcessingMotherboards, busses, and chipsets* ISA* EISA* VLBPCI
Contributed by &a.rgrimes;.25 April 1995.
Of the Intel PCI chip sets, the following list describes
various types of known-brokenness and the degree of
breakage, listed from worst to best.
Mercury: Cache coherency problems,
especially if there are ISA bus masters behind
the ISA to PCI bridge chip. Hardware flaw, only
known work around is to turn the cache
off.
Saturn-I (ie, 82424ZX at rev 0, 1 or 2):
Write back cache coherency
problems. Hardware flaw, only known work around
is to set the external cache to write-through
mode. Upgrade to Saturn-II.
Saturn-II (ie, 82424ZX at rev 3 or 4):
Works fine, but many MB
manufactures leave out the external dirty bit
SRAM needed for write back operation. Work
arounds are either run it in write through mode,
or get the dirty bit SRAM installed. (I have
these for the ASUS PCI/I-486SP3G rev 1.6 and
later boards).
Neptune: Can not run more than 2 bus
master devices. Admitted Intel design flaw.
Workarounds include do not run more than 2 bus
masters, special hardware design to replace the
PCI bus arbiter (appears on Intel Altair board
and several other Intel server group MB's). And
of course Intel's official answer, move to the
Triton chip set, we ``fixed it there''.
Triton: No known cache coherency or bus
master problems, chip set does not implement
parity checking. Workaround for parity issue.
Wait for Triton-II.
Triton-II: Unknown, not yet shipping.
mt(1) provides generic access to the tape
drives. Some of the more common commands are rewind,
erase, and status. See the mt(1)
manual page for a detailed description.
Controller Interfaces
There are several different interfaces that support
tape drives. The interfaces are SCSI, IDE, Floppy and Parallel
Port. A wide variety of tape drives are available for these
interfaces. Controllers are discussed in
SCSI drives
The st(4) driver provides support for 8mm
(Exabyte), 4mm (DAT: Digital Audio Tape), QIC (Quarter-Inch
Cartridge), DLT (Digital Linear Tape), QIC Minicartridge
and 9-track (remember the big reels that you see spinning
in Hollywood computer rooms) tape drives. See the
st(4) manual page for a detailed description.
The drives listed below are currently being used by
members of the FreeBSD community. They are not the only drives
that will work with FreeBSD. They just happen to be the ones
that we use.
4mm (DAT: Digital Audio Tape)
8mm (Exabyte)
QIC (Quarter-Inch Cartridge)
DLT (Digital Linear Tape)
Mini-Cartridge
Autoloaders/Changers
* IDE drives Floppy drives
* Parallel port drives Detailed Information
The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE
ANCDA 2750 28077 -003 type 1 removable SCSI 2"
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 1.35GB when using QIC-1350 tapes.
This drive will read and write QIC-150 (DC6150), QIC-250
(DC6250), and QIC-525 (DC6525) tapes as well.
Data transfer rate is 350kB/s using dump(8).
Rates of 530kB/s have been reported when using
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
The SCSI bus connector on this tape drive is reversed
from that on most other SCSI devices. Make sure that you have
enough SCSI cable to twist the cable one-half turn before and
after the Archive Anaconda tape drive, or turn your other SCSI
devices upside-down.
Two kernel code changes are required to use this
drive. This drive will not work as delivered.
If you have a SCSI-2 controller, short jumper 6.
Otherwise, the drive behaves are a SCSI-1 device. When operating
as a SCSI-1 device, this drive, "locks" the SCSI bus during some
tape operations, including: fsf, rewind, and rewoffl.
If you are using the NCR SCSI controllers, patch the
file /usr/src/sys/pci/ncr.c (as shown below). Build and install
a new kernel.
*** 4831,4835 ****
};
! if (np->latetime>4) {
/*
** Although we tried to wake it up,
--- 4831,4836 ----
};
! if (np->latetime>1200) {
/*
** Although we tried to wake it up,
Reported by: Jonathan M. Bresler jmb@FreeBSD.ORG
The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE
Python 28454-XXX4ASB" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "density code
0x8c, 512-byte blocks"
This is a DDS-1 tape drive.
Native capacity is 2.5GB on 90m tapes.
Data transfer rate is XXX.
This drive was repackaged by Sun Microsystems as model 411.
Reported by: Bob Bishop rb@gid.co.uk
The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE
VIPER 60 21116 -007" "type 1 removable SCSI 1"
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 60MB.
Data transfer rate is XXX.
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
Reported by: Philippe Regnauld regnauld@hsc.fr
The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE
VIPER 150 21531 -004" "Archive Viper 150 is a known rogue" "type
1 removable SCSI 1". A multitude of firmware revisions exist
for this drive. Your drive may report different numbers (e.g
"21247 -005".
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 150/250MB. Both 150MB (DC6150)
and 250MB (DC6250) tapes have the recording format. The 250MB
tapes are approximately 67% longer than the 150MB tapes. This
drive can read 120MB tapes as well. It can not write 120MB tapes.
Data transfer rate is 100kB/s
This drive reads and writes DC6150 (6150MB) and DC6250
(250MB) tapes.
This drives quirks are known and pre-compiled into the
scsi tape device driver (st(4)).
Under FreeBSD 2.2-current, use mt blocksize
512 to set the blocksize. (The particular drive had
firmware revision 21247 -005. Other firmware revisions may
behave differently) Previous versions of FreeBSD did not have
this problem.
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
Reported by: Pedro A M Vazquez vazquez@IQM.Unicamp.BR
Mike Smith msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au
The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE
VIPER 2525 25462 -011" "type 1 removable SCSI 1"
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 525MB.
Data transfer rate is 180kB/s at 90 inches/sec.
The drive reads QIC-525, QIC-150, QIC-120 and QIC-24 tapes.
Writes QIC-525, QIC-150, and QIC-120.
Firmware revisions prior to "25462 -011" are bug
ridden and will not function properly.
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
Reported by: Hellmuth Michaelis hm@kts.org
The boot message identifier for this drive is "Conner tape".
This is a floppy controller, minicartridge tape drive.
Native capacity is XXXX
Data transfer rate is XXX
The drive uses QIC-80 tape cartridges.
Reported by: Mark Hannon mark@seeware.DIALix.oz.au
The boot message identifier for this drive is "CONNER
CTMS 3200 7.00" "type 1 removable SCSI 2".
This is a minicartridge tape drive.
Native capacity is XXXX
Data transfer rate is XXX
The drive uses QIC-3080 tape cartridges.
Reported by: Thomas S. Traylor tst@titan.cs.mci.com
The boot message identifier for this drive is "DEC
TZ87 (C) DEC 9206" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "density code 0x19"
This is a DLT tape drive.
Native capacity is 10GB.
This drive supports hardware data compression.
Data transfer rate is 1.2MB/s.
This drive is identical to the Quantum DLT2000. The
drive firmware can be set to emulate several well-known drives,
including an Exabyte 8mm drive.
Reported by: Wilko Bulte wilko@yedi.iaf.nl
The boot message identifier for this drive is ""
This is a mini-cartridge tape drive.
Native capacity is 1GB when using MC3000XL minicartridges.
Data transfer rate is XXX
This drive can read and write DC2300 (550MB), DC2750
(750MB), MC3000 (750MB), and MC3000XL (1GB) minicartridges.
WARNING: This drive does not meet the SCSI-2
specifications. The drive locks up completely in response to a
SCSI MODE_SELECT command unless there is a formatted tape in the
drive. Before using this drive, set the tape blocksize with
mt -f /dev/st0ctl.0 blocksize 1024. Before using a
minicartridge for the first time, the minicartridge must be
formated. FreeBSD 2.1.0-RELEASE and earlier: /sbin/scsi -f
/dev/rst0.ctl -s 600 -c "4 0 0 0 0 0" (alternatively, fetch
a copy of the scsiformat shell script from FreeBSD
2.2). FreeBSD 2.2 and later: /sbin/scsiformat -q -w
/dev/rst0.ctl
Reported by: Bob Beaulieu ez@eztravel.com
The boot message identifier for this drive is "EXABYTE
EXB-8200 252X" "type 1 removable SCSI 1"
This is an 8mm tape drive.
Native capacity is 2.3GB.
Data transfer rate is 270kB/s.
This drive is fairly slow in responding to the SCSI
bus during boot. A custom kernel may be required (set SCSI_DELAY
to 10 seconds).
There are a large number of firmware configurations
for this drive, some have been customized to a particular
vendor's hardware. The firmware can be changed via EPROM
replacement.
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
Reported by: Mike Smith msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au
The boot message identifier for this drive is "EXABYTE
EXB-8500-85Qanx0 0415" "type 1 removable SCSI 2"
This is an 8mm tape drive.
Native capacity is 5GB.
Data transfer rate is 300kB/s.
Reported by: Greg Lehey grog@lemis.de
The boot message identifier for this drive is "EXABYTE
EXB-85058SQANXR1 05B0" "type 1 removable SCSI 2"
This is an 8mm tape drive.
Native capacity is 2GB.
The drive supports hardware data compression.
Data transfer rate is 300kB/s.
Reported by: Glen Foster gfoster@gfoster.com
The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP
C1533A 9503" "type 1 removable SCSI 2".
This is a DDS-2 tape drive. DDS-2 means hardware data
compression and narrower tracks for increased data capacity.
Native capacity is 4GB when using 120m tapes. This drive
supports hardware data compression.
Data transfer rate is 510kB/s.
This drive is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore
6000eU and 6000i tape drives and C1533A DDS-2 DAT drive.
The drive has a block of 8 dip switches. The proper
settings for FreeBSD are: 1 ON; 2 ON; 3 OFF; 4 ON; 5 ON; 6 ON; 7
ON; 8 ON.
switch 1 2 Result
ON ON Compression enabled at power-on, with host control
ON OFF Compression enabled at power-on, no host
control
OFF ON Compression disabled at power-on; the
host is allowed to control compression
OFF OFF Compression disabled at power-on, no host
control
Switch 3 controls MRS (Media Recognition System). MRS
tapes have stripes on the transparent leader. These identify the
tape as DDS (Digital Data Storage) grade media. Tapes
that do not have the stripes will be treated as write-protected.
Switch 3 OFF enables MRS. Switch 3 ON disables MRS.
Warning: Quality control on these drives
varies greatly. One FreeBSD core-team member has returned 2 of
these drives. Neither lasted more than 5 months.
Reported by: Stefan Esser se@ZPR.Uni-Koeln.DE
The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP
HP35470A T503" type 1 removable SCSI 2" "Sequential-Access
density code 0x13, variable blocks".
This is a DDS-1 tape drive. DDS-1 is the original DAT
tape format.
Native capacity is 2GB when using 90m tapes.
Data transfer rate is 183kB/s.
The same mechanism is used in Hewlett-Packard's
SureStore tape drive, C35470A DDS format DAT drive, C1534A DDS
format DAT drive and HP C1536A DDS format DAT drive.
The HP C1534A DDS format DAT drive has two indicator
lights, one green and one amber. The green one indicates tape
action: slow flash during load, steady when loaded, fast flash
during read/write operations. The amber one indicates warnings:
slow flash when cleaning is required or tape is nearing the end
of its useful life, steady indicates an hard fault. (factory
service required?)
Reported by Gary Crutcher gcrutchr@nightflight.com
The boot message identifier for this drive is "".
This is a DDS-2 tape drive. DDS-2 means hardware data
compression and narrower tracks for increased data capacity.
Native capacity is 24GB when using 120m tapes. This
drive supports hardware data compression.
Data transfer rate is 510kB/s (native).
This drive is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore
tape drive.
The drive has two selectors on the rear panel. The
selector closer to the fan is SCSI id. The other selector should
be set to 7.
There are four internal switches. These should be
set: 1 ON; 2 ON; 3 ON; 4 OFF.
At present the kernel drivers do not automatically
change tapes at the end of a volume. This shell script can be
used to change tapes:
#!/bin/sh
PATH="/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin"; export PATH
usage()
{
echo "Usage: dds_changer [123456ne] raw-device-name
echo "1..6 = Select cartridge"
echo "next cartridge"
echo "eject magazine"
exit 2
}
if [ $# -ne 2 ] ; then
usage
fi
cdb3=0
cdb4=0
cdb5=0
case $1 in
[123456])
cdb3=$1
cdb4=1
;;
n)
;;
e)
cdb5=0x80
;;
?)
usage
;;
esac
scsi -f $2 -s 100 -c "1b 0 0 $cdb3 $cdb4 $cdb5"
The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP
HP35450A -A C620" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "Sequential-Access
density code 0x13"
This is a DDS-1 tape drive. DDS-1 is the original DAT
tape format.
Native capacity is 1.2GB.
Data transfer rate is 160kB/s.
Reported by: mark thompson mark.a.thompson@pobox.com
The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP
HP35470A 9 09" type 1 removable SCSI 2"
This is a DDS-1 tape drive. DDS-1 is the original DAT
tape format.
Native capacity is 2GB when using 90m tapes.
Data transfer rate is 183kB/s.
The same mechanism is used in Hewlett-Packard's
SureStore tape drive, C35470A DDS format DAT drive, C1534A
DDS format DAT drive, and HP C1536A DDS format DAT drive.
Warning: Quality control on these drives
varies greatly. One FreeBSD core-team member has returned 5 of
these drives. None lasted more than 9 months.
Reported by: David Dawes dawes@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au (9 09)
The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP
HP35480A 1009" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "Sequential-Access
density code 0x13".
This is a DDS-DC tape drive. DDS-DC is DDS-1 with
hardware data compression. DDS-1 is the original DAT tape
format.
Native capacity is 2GB when using 90m tapes. This
drive supports hardware data compression
Data transfer rate is 183kB/s.
This drive is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore
and tape
drives and C35480A DDS format DAT drive..
This drive will occasionally hang during a tape eject
operation (mt offline). Pressing the front panel button
will eject the tape and bring the tape drive back to life.
WARNING: HP 35480-03110 only. On at least two
occasions this tape drive when used with FreeBSD 2.1.0, an IBM
Server 320 and an 2940W SCSI controller resulted in all SCSI disk
partitions being lost. The problem has not be analyzed or
resolved at this time.