NetBSD/i386

NetBSD/i386 is the port of NetBSD to IBM PCs and PC clones with i386-family processors. It will run on ISA (AT-bus), EISA, PCI, and VL-bus systems, with or without math coprocessors. It does not run on MCA systems, such as some IBM PS/2 systems.

The History of NetBSD/i386

NetBSD/i386 was the original port of NetBSD, and was initially released as NetBSD 0.8. There were complete sets of binaries made of NetBSD/i386 for the NetBSD 0.9, NetBSD 1.0, NetBSD 1.1, and NetBSD 1.2 releases.

Charles Hannum and Frank van der Linden are the maintainers of NetBSD/i386.

Supported Hardware

The minimal configuration for a NetBSD/i386 system requires 4M of RAM and about 40M of disk space. For a full installation (including source and X11), at least 8M of RAM and 200M of disk space are recommended.

Devices (driver names in parenthesis) supported by NetBSD/i386 include:

• Standard PC floppy controllers (fdc) and drives (fd)
• SCSI host adapters:
  • On the ISA bus:
    • Adaptec AHA-154xA, -B, -C, and -CF (aha)
    • Adaptec AIC-6260- and AIC-6360-based boards, including the Adaptec-152x and the SoundBlaster SCSI host adapter (aic). Note: you cannot boot from these boards if they do not have a boot ROM, and many do not.
    • Buslogic 54x [AHA-154x clones] (bt). Note: some old revisions of this card use a different software interface, and may require use of the `aha' driver.
    • Buslogic 445 (bt)
    • Seagate ST01/02, Future Domain TMC-885 and TMC-950 (sea). [NOT RECENTLY TESTED]
    • Ultrastor 14f and 34f (uha)
    • Western Digital WD7000-family, including WD7000-ASC (bus-mastering DMA controller), WD7000-FASST2 (an -ASC with new firmware and scatter-gather), WD7000-ASE (Apollo OEM) and compatibles, including the Future Domain TMC-7000 (wds)
  • On the EISA bus:
    • Adaptec 174x (ahb)
    • Adaptec AIC-7770, AHA-274x, and AHA-284x (ahc). Note: some of these devices are on-board or VLB devices that masquerade as EISA devices.
    • Buslogic 74x (bt ISA driver)
    • Ultrastor 24f (uha ISA driver)
  • On the PCI bus:
    • Adaptec AHA-2940, AHA-2940 Ultra, AHA-2944, AHA-2944 Ultra, AHA-3940, AHA-3940 Ultra, AIC-7850, AIC-7870, and AIC-7880 Ultra (ahc).
    • Buslogic 9xx (bt ISA driver)
    • NCR 53c810, 53c810AP, 53c815, 53c820, 53c825, 53c860, and 53c875 (ncr)
• MDA, CGA, VGA, SVGA and HGC Display Adapters (pccons or pcvt). Note: not all of the display adapters supported by NetBSD/i386 will work with X. See the XFree86 FAQ for more information.
• Serial ports:
  • 8250/16450-based ports (com)
  • 16550-based ports (com)
  • AST-style 4-port serial boards (ast parent, com slaves)
  • BOCA 8-port serial boards (boca parent, com slaves)
  • IBM PC-RT 4-port serial boards (rtfps parent, com slaves)
• Standard PC parallel ports (lpt)
• Network interfaces:
  • On the ISA bus:
    • AT&T StarLAN 10, EN100 and StarLAN Fiber (ie)
    • 3COM 3c501 (el)
    • 3COM 3c503 (ed)
    • 3COM 3c505 (eg)
    • 3COM 3c507 (ie)
    • 3COM 3c509 (ep)
    • Intel EtherExpress 16 (ie)
    • Intel EtherExpress Pro (iy)
    • Digital DEPCA (le)
    • BICC Isolan (le) [NOT RECENTLY TESTED]
    • Fujitsu MB86960A- and MB86965A-based ethernet cards, including the Fujitsu FMV-18x series, and Allied-Telesis AT1700-series and RE2000 cards (fe)
    • SMC/WD 8003, 8013, and the SMC ``Elite16'' (ed)
    • SMC/WD 8216 (the SMC ``Elite16 Ultra'' (ed)
    • Novell NE1000, NE2000, and compatibles (ed)
    • Novell NE2100 (le) [NOT RECENTLY TESTED]
  • On the EISA bus:
    • 3COM 3c579 (ep). Note: this driver also supports 3c509 ISA cards that masquerade as EISA devices.
    • Digital DEFEA SAS and DAS FDDI cards (fea)
  • On the PCI bus:
    • Digital DC21040-, DC21041-, and DC21140-based ``tulip'' ethernet cards, including the Digital DE435, SMC EtherPower, and a variety of compatibles (de)
    • Digital DEFPA SAS and DAS FDDI cards (fpa)
    • 3COM 3c590 and 3c595 (ep)
    • PCnet-PCI ethernet cards (le)
• Disk drives:
  • Most SCSI disk drives (sd)
  • MFM, ESDI, IDE and RLL hard disk controllers (wdc) and drives (wd)
• Tape drives:
  • Most SCSI tape drives (st)
  • QIC-02 and QIC-36 format (Archive- and Wangtek-compatible) tape drives with ISA controller cards (wt)
• CD-ROM drives:
  • Most SCSI CD-ROM drives (cd)
  • Mitsumi CD-ROM drives (mcd)
• Media changers:
  • Most SCSI media changers (ch)
• Mice:
  • ``Logitech''-style bus mice (lms ISA driver)
  • ``Microsoft''-style bus mice (mms ISA driver)
  • ``PS/2''-style mice (pms ISA driver)
  • Serial mice. Note: no special kernel support is necessary for serial mice. Only a configured ``com'' driver is required.
• Sound hardware:
  • Gravis UltraSound and UltraSound Max (gus ISA driver)
  • MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum family (pas ISA driver)
  • Personal Sound System and SoundPort (pss and sp ISA drivers)
  • Creative Labs SoundBlaster family and compatibles (sb ISA driver)
  • Windows Sound System (wss ISA driver)
• Miscellaneous:
  • PCI-PCI bridges found on a variety of PCI hardware (ppb PCI driver)
  • Joystick ports found on a variety of sound and multi-i/o cards (joy ISA driver)

To find out what devices are supported by the latest release of NetBSD/i386, or to find out how to install it, look in that release's installation notes.

Go to an FTP site that carries NetBSD/i386.

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