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
Supported Hardware
- All New World Apple PowerPC machines (ones with built-in USB ports, 1999-2006)
- Freescale MPC85XX evaluation boards
- Sony Playstation 3 (powerpc64 only, starting with FreeBSD 9.0)
Getting started
Instructions: http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/ppcinstall.txt
- Starting with 9.0, the installer works properly, and most of the above instructions can be ignored
Xorg
Xorg should work on all supported Apple 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