PowerPC
See also the official project page at http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html.
Note: If you're adding relevant information here, please poke someone to update ppc.sgml.
Developer notes
Getting started
Instructions: http://people.freebsd.org/~grehan/iso_install.txt
Limitations
- fdisk does not work. However, gpart has support for MBRs. Use gpart instead.
Caveats
Keyboard support
Only USB keyboards are supported on FreeBSD < 8.0. In particular, keyboards connected through Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) are not supported in the 6.x and 7.x release series. ADB keyboards are used on some notebooks, and in those cases you will need an external USB keyboard.
Of the most recent devices, 15" and 17" PowerBooks have internal USB peripherals. iBooks and 12" PowerBooks have USB trackpads and ADB keyboards. Older machines most likely have ADB keyboards and trackpads. In any case you can check whether your machine has USB or ADB connections by looking it up at
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/hardware2.html
Xorg
Xorg should work on all supported hardware. Console restore after leaving X11 may or may not work, depending on your graphics hardware.
Peter Grehan tested X11 on:
- rev B iMac (Rage 3D Pro 215GP, accel disabled).
700Mhz eMac (Nvidia GeForce2 MX)
12" 1.33G G4 powerbook (Nvidia GeForce G5200)
- and Martin Minkus has run it on a 350MHz iMac, Rage 128VR.
On ATI Radeon-based machines there are still some problems:
- A ofw syscons range check needs to be relaxed using the sysctl hw.ofwfb.relax_mmap.
- You may need to add the following to your xorg.conf into the Section "Device"
Option "iBookHacks" "on"
- The Xserver sometimes seems to have problems querying the Monitor Modes
Sound
uaudio(4) works. snd_ai2s(4) and snd_davbus(4) support built-in audio on various mac models.
Links
Open Firmware Quick Reference: http://www.firmworks.com/QuickRef.html
Garance A. Drosehn's description about FreeBSD on the Minimac: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ppc/2005-January/000814.html