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Hardware Supported by NetBSD

Platforms ('ports')

Not yet integrated porting efforts

Suggested Ports

Machine-Independent Devices

Machines and hardware platforms

Platforms ('ports')

Ports in the source tree (top)

This table lists details for each of the 58 supported ports, including the latest formal release or snapshot ('snap'). Complete binary and source distributions are available for ports with formal releases.

Port CPU Machines Latest Release
acorn26 arm Acorn Archimedes, A-series and R-series systems 4.0
acorn32 arm Acorn RiscPC/A7000/NC and compatibles 4.0
algor mips Algorithmics MIPS evaluation boards 4.0
alpha alpha Digital Alpha (64-bit) 4.0
amd64 x86_64 Advanced Micro Devices AMD64(tm) 64-bit CPUs 4.0
amiga m68k Commodore Amiga, MacroSystem DraCo 4.0
amigappc powerpc PowerPC-based Amiga boards none
arc mips Machines following the Advanced RISC Computing spec 4.0
atari m68k Atari TT030, Falcon, Hades 4.0
bebox powerpc Be Inc's BeBox snap
cats arm Chalice Technology's Strong Arm evaluation board 4.0
cesfic m68k CES's FIC8234 VME processor board 4.0
cobalt mips Cobalt Networks' Microservers 4.0
dreamcast sh3 Sega Dreamcast game console 4.0
evbarm arm ARM evaluation boards 4.0
evbmips mips MIPS-based evaluation boards 4.0
evbppc powerpc PowerPC-based evaluation boards 4.0
evbsh3 sh3 Evaluation boards with Renesas (Hitachi) Super-H SH3 and SH4 CPUs 4.0
ews4800mips mips NEC's MIPS based EWS4800 workstations snap
hp300 m68k Hewlett-Packard 9000/300 and 400 series 4.0
hp700 hppa Hewlett-Packard 9000/700 series 4.0
hpcarm arm StrongARM based Windows CE PDA machines 4.0
hpcmips mips MIPS based Windows CE PDA machines 4.0
hpcsh sh3 Renesas (Hitachi) SH3 and SH4 based Windows CE PDA machines 4.0
i386 i386 i386 family IBM PCs and clones 4.0
ia64 itanium Itanium family of processors none
ibmnws powerpc IBM Network Station Series 1000 4.0
iyonix arm Iyonix ARM pc 4.0
landisk sh3 SH4 based NAS appliances by I-O DATA 4.0
luna68k m68k OMRON Tateisi Electric's LUNA series 4.0
mac68k m68k Apple Macintosh 4.0
macppc powerpc Apple Power Macintosh and clones 4.0
mipsco mips Mips family of workstations and servers 4.0
mmeye sh3 Brains' mmEye Multi Media Server 4.0
mvme68k m68k Motorola MVME 68k SBCs 4.0
mvmeppc powerpc Motorola MVME PowerPC SBCs 4.0
netwinder arm StrongARM based NetWinder machines 4.0
news68k m68k Sony's m68k based "NET WORK STATION" series 4.0
newsmips mips Sony's MIPS based "NET WORK STATION" series 4.0
next68k m68k NeXT 68k 'black' hardware 4.0
ofppc powerpc Generic OpenFirmware compliant PowerPC machines 4.0
playstation2 mips SONY PlayStation 2 snap
pmax mips Digital MIPS-based DECstations and DECsystems 4.0
pmppc powerpc Artesyn's PM/PPC board 4.0
prep powerpc PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) and CHRP machines 4.0
sandpoint powerpc Motorola Sandpoint reference platform 4.0
sbmips mips Broadcom SiByte evaluation boards 4.0
sgimips mips Silicon Graphics' MIPS-based workstations 4.0
shark arm Digital DNARD ("shark") 4.0
sparc sparc Sun SPARC (32-bit) 4.0
sparc64 sparc Sun UltraSPARC (64-bit) 4.0
sun2 m68k Sun 2 4.0
sun3 m68k Sun 3 and 3x 4.0
vax vax Digital VAX 4.0
x68k m68k Sharp X680x0 series 4.0
xen i386, x86_64 Xen Virtual Machine Monitor none
zaurus arm Sharp C3x00 series PDA none

Ports by CPU architecture (top)

This table contains the same set of ports as in the above list, but ordered by MACHINE_ARCH CPU architecture value (returned by 'uname -p') and showing a total of 16 CPU types. Machines of the same MACHINE_ARCH share the same userland binaries (with a few device specific exceptions). Note that both big endian (eb) and little endian (el) MIPS and SH3 ports are supported.

It contains
CPU Port
alpha alpha
arm acorn26  acorn32  cats  evbarm  hpcarm  iyonix  netwinder  shark  zaurus 
hppa hp700
i386 i386  xen
m68010 sun2 
m68k amiga  atari  cesfic  hp300  luna68k  mac68k  mvme68k  news68k  next68k  sun3  x68k
mipseb evbmips  (either eb and el) ews4800mips  mipsco  newsmips  sbmips  (either eb and el) sgimips
mipsel algor  arc  cobalt  evbmips  hpcmips  playstation2  pmax  sbmips 
powerpc amigappc  bebox  evbppc ibmnws macppc  mvmeppc  ofppc  pmppc  prep  sandpoint 
sh3eb evbsh3  (either eb and el) mmeye
sh3el dreamcast  evbsh3  landisk  hpcsh 
sparc sparc 
sparc64 sparc64 (Can also run sparc binaries)
vax vax
x86_64 amd64 (Can also run i386 binaries), xen

Ports history (top)

The following table shows the date of inclusion of each port matched with NetBSD releases.

Port / Release Date    
i386 1993/03/21    
NetBSD 0.8 release      
amiga 1993/07/05    
hp300 1993/08/07    
NetBSD 0.9 release      
pc532 1993/09/09 (removed on 2008/01/07)    
mac68k 1993/11/29    
sparc 1994/02/01    
sun3 1994/02/23    
pmax 1994/05/27    
vax 1994/08/02    
NetBSD 1.0 release      
alpha 1995/02/13    
atari 1995/03/26    
mvme68k 1995/07/25    
NetBSD 1.1 release      
arm32 1996/01/31 (split into acorn32, cats, and shark after 1.5 release)    
x68k 1996/05/05    
ofppc 1996/09/30 (imported as powerpc, renamed on 1998/05/28)    
NetBSD 1.2 release      
bebox 1997/10/14    
NetBSD 1.3 release      
newsmips 1998/02/18    
macppc 1998/05/15    
next68k 1998/06/09    
sparc64 1998/06/20    
NetBSD 1.4 release      
mmeye 1999/09/13    
evbsh3 1999/09/13    
hpcmips 1999/09/16    
news68k 1999/12/09    
luna68k 2000/01/05    
arc 2000/01/23    
prep 2000/02/29    
cobalt 2000/03/15    
amigappc 2000/03/25    
arm26 2000/05/09 (renamed to acorn26 on 2002/03/24)    
sgimips 2000/06/14    
mipsco 2000/08/12    
NetBSD 1.5 release      
dreamcast 2000/12/11    
hpcsh 2001/01/17    
sandpoint 2001/02/04    
hpcarm 2001/02/23    
netwinder 2001/04/20    
sun2 2001/05/09    
cesfic 2001/05/14    
algor 2001/05/28    
cats 2001/06/10 (split out from arm32)    
evbppc 2001/06/14    
amd64 2001/06/19 (imported as x86_64, renamed on 2003/04/26)    
playstation2 2001/10/16    
evbarm 2001/10/27    
acorn32 2001/11/20 (split out from arm32)    
shark 2002/02/10 (split out from arm32)    
mvmeppc 2002/02/27    
hp700 2002/03/03    
evbmips 2002/03/06    
sbmips 2002/03/07    
acorn26 2002/03/24 (renamed from arm26)    
pmppc 2002/05/31    
NetBSD 1.6 release      
evbsh5 2002/10/18 (removed on 2007/04/08)    
ibmnws 2003/10/19    
xen 2004/03/11    
(NetBSD 2.0 branched)      
iyonix 2004/10/14    
NetBSD 2.0 release      
NetBSD 3.0 release      
ews4800mips 2005/12/29    
landisk 2006/09/01    
(NetBSD 4.0 branched)      
zaurus 2006/12/17    

Not yet integrated porting efforts

General Information about not yet integrated ports (top)

For ports not listed above, no support is available as formal release or in the mainline experimental source distribution.

In most cases, people porting to a new machine wish to stay unknown to the public. This is a necessity, as answering "me too"-style requests just takes too much time. If you really think you can contribute to porting to a new machine (read: have started already; or know how to do it, but just don't want to duplicate efforts; or know lots about the internals of the machine which are not publicly known) you should contact the core group, who will provide contact to your co-strugglers.

Details about some not yet integrated ports (top)

However, for these machines, more details are available:

  • Connectix VirtualPC

    A software emulated Pentium machine running on PowerMAC machines. The University of Melbourne, Department of Computer Science has developed a set of patches for NetBSD/i386 to enable it to run under VirtualPC.

  • NetBSD/pc98

    A semi-PC compatible line of computers made by NEC. (Page is in Japanese).

Suggested Ports

ARM (top)

  • Psion 5 series

    An ARM7100 based handheld palmtop with 4-16MB of RAM, 640x280 greyscale display, CompactFlash slot, serial, audio, IrDA, and an excellent keyboard. Uses the same series of CPU as NetBSD/arm32.

    Contact: .

  • Acorn A680

    ARM2-based evaluation machine built by Acorn, but never released. It is unique amongst Acorn machines as it has on-board SCSI as well as 8MB RAM (twin MEMCs). Very rare, but interestly nonetheless. A machine could be loaned by Stephen Borrill. Technical Reference Manual also available.

    Contact: .

  • MicroDigital Mico

    ARM7500FE based machine with on-board USB and ISA slots. Normally runs RISC OS, so should be able to be supported by NetBSD/arm32.

    Contact: .

  • RiscStation R7500

    Yet another ARM7500FE based RISC OS box. Should be no harder than the rest of them to support.

    Contact: .

Motorola M680X0 (top)

  • Q40

    The Q40 is a 68040 based successor to the Sinclair QL, with enhanced graphics, storage and peripheral capabilities.

    Contact: .

  • Other 68k based VME boards

    Tadpole (with their TP34V), BVM, and Densan produce boards similar to the Motorola mvme68k range. A linux port to the Tadpole and BVM boards is available.

    Contact: .

  • Cisco M68K based routers

    One of cisco's previous range of routers were 68030 and 68040 based. An example would be the AGS+, a rackmount multibus system with 16MB of RAM, 2MB flash RAM, serial and multiple ethernet and other interfaces. These can sometimes be found on sites such as ebay for a few hundred dollars.

    Contact: .

  • NCR Tower 32

    The Tower 32 is a 68020-based machine from about 1987 that normally runs System V release 3, pretty much straight as it came from AT&T. It's at the slow end of things by today's standard. The specification is probably:

    • Stock 68020 VM hardware

    • Around 16 meg max of RAM

    • QIC-150 tape drive on a dedicated controller

    • Two ST-506 system disks

    • Multibus-I expansion bus (IEEE-796)

    • Optional SCSI

    This machine apparently had a custom MMU, not suitable for paged virtual memory.

    Hardware docs are likely to be nonexistent, since the machine was built before NCR abandoned the 68000 line for Intel, which in turn was before AT&T bought them out and then spun them off again.

    Contact: .

  • DIAB DS90

    (from Iggy Drougge)

    m68k machines built throughout the eighties and early nineties, until DIAB was bought by Bull.

    The earliest versions are 68000 and 68010 based, but from the DS90/20 on, they're fully 32-bit. There were single-processor as well as SMP machines. The top of the range is believed to have featured four 68040 processors. The native OS is DNIX, a kind of System V or System III with a real-time kernel.

    Apart from the m68k processor(s), there is/are VME bus(es), SCSI (believed to be Zilog) and some proprietary bus called DB. There is already support for almost every component spread across the existing NetBSD ports, excluding SMP. The machines themselves are multiuser systems with support for dozens of terminals given the right expansion cards.

    Iggy has a DS90/20 workstation which he has kindly made available for anyone who wishes to attempt a port to these machines.

    Contact: .

Motorola PowerPC (top)

  • Apple Nubus powermacs

    The early PowerPC Macintosh systems were built along the lines of their earlier mac68k systems: nubus architecture and custom ROMs. The NetBSD/macppc port requires OpenFirmware, which is not available on these systems. MkLinux, an Open Source effort partially funded and engineered by Apple, supports several of these older boxes. Bob Nestor <rnestor@metronet.com> would be willing to loan his Performa-5320 All-in-One to anyone interested.

    Contact: .

  • Densan

    Densan produce a range of PowerPC based VME and CompactPCI systems. These boards share a common system ASIC which mimicks the PCC2 used in Motorola's mvme68k systems.

    Contact: , and port-mvme68k@NetBSD.org.

  • IBM RS/6000 (MCA based)

    The pre-PowerPC RS/6000 machines were based on the POWER and POWER2 architecture, with Microchannel (MCA) bus. There is i386 MCA bus code in NetBSD tree now, which would help with the MCA aspect.

    Contact:

Motorola M88K (top)

The Motorola 88000-series microprocessors (88100+88200 and the 88110) were Motorola's RISC processors of the late 1980's and early 1990's. They abandoned the m88k systems to concentrate on the PowerPC with Apple and IBM, but not before several good systems were built around the 88k.

  • Motorola mvme88k

    Motorola produced a line of 88k-based VME boards--similar to their 68k cousins that are supported in the mvme68k port. OpenBSD has support for some of these cards.

    Contact: , and Allen Briggs .

  • DG AViiON

    Data General produced a number of AViiON systems, from uniprocessor workstations to multiprocessor servers, based around the 88k architecture. Allen Briggs has one of the dual-processor deskside units (the AV400), but has no documentation.

    Contact: , and Allen Briggs .

  • OMRON luna88k

    One of the earlier 88k systems was the OMRON LUNA-88K, a 4-processor machine used for Mach development at CMU. These purportedly have some documentation, but it's also purported to be in Japanese. These systems are fairly rare.

    Contact: , and Allen Briggs .

MIPS (top)

  • 64-bit MIPS

    Many of the existing NetBSD/mips platforms are capable of running 64-bit code. A NetBSD/mips64 port would be similar to NetBSD/alpha with 64-bit longs and pointers and 32-bit ints.

    Contact: .

  • Densan

    Densan produce a range of MIPS based VME and CompactPCI systems. These boards share a common system ASIC which mimicks the PCC2 used in Motorola's mvme68k systems.

    Contact: , and .

  • Tektronics/NCD X-terminals

    NCD produced a wide range of X-terminals, including the MIPS R4600 based HMX, HMXpro, and HMXpro24. The HMX and HMXpro were 8bit and the HMXpro24 24bit displays, and all machines had custom ASICs as coprocessors. NCD recently released an RM5200 based successor to the HMXpro24. The biggest obstacle to the port would be obtaining technical information on the machines.

    Contact: .

  • Nintendo 64

    Given the progress on the NetBSD/sh3 port to the Sega Dreamcast, another obvious target could be the MIPS R4000 series based Nintendo 64 games console. Games consoles share many interface and resource limitations with embedded and palmtop devices, opening a possibly more serious side to the port.

    Contact: .

Renesas Super-H (SH3/SH4) (top)

Intel i386 and above (top)

  • Nokia 9110 communicator

    Cellular modem and personal communicator in one. Reputed to be a based on a pretty standard i486 with 2MB of RAM and a custom keyboard setup. Support for I/O and memory expansion options could make this more interesting, particularly the cellular modem.

    Contact: .

  • Densan

    Densan produce a range of x86 based VME and CompactPCI systems. These boards share a common system ASIC which mimicks the PCC2 used in Motorola's mvme68k systems.

    Contact: , and .

Other (top)

  • DEC PDP-10

    NetBSD/pdp10 is a suggested port of NetBSD to the 36bit DEC PDP-10 computers, their clones, and PDP-10 software emulators.

    Contact: [ subscribe | archive ]

  • IBM AS/400

    IBM's proprietary minicomputer range. Early models were based on an IBM CISC CPU. Current models have switched across to the Motorola PowerPC. There are some linux folk who have set up a Linux on AS/400 Project with some information, including posts by two IBM engineers as to the lack of hardware support in the CISC processors for several important features needed by a unix-like OS.

    Contact: .

  • IBM S/390

    A NetBSD/390 port should be straightforward now that there's a gcc for the 390 available. Besides, it wouldn't even require access to a real machine to start development since the Hercules S/390 emulator is in the package tree.

    Contact: [ subscribe | archive ]

  • IBM PC-RT

    An early workstation from IBM, based on the IBM '032' or ROMP CPU. Also known as IBM models 6150, 6151 or 6152. Ran both AIX and a customised version of BSD (called AOS).

    Contact: .

  • Intel i960

    There were a few variants of the i960 architecture that included an MMU, but virtually all of the i960 devices shipped, such as X-terminals, printers, and routers, were based on the cheaper non MMU versions.

    Contact: .

Machine-Independent Devices

Hardware Devices (top)

Pseudo-device and logical drivers (top)

Machines and hardware platforms

Generic hardware (top)

NetBSD has made a good showing on a wide range of generic platforms, from powerful servers to handheld and embedded devices. Please take a look to ports table and refer to specific port home page for details.

Hardware designed for and with NetBSD (top)

A wide variety of commercial hardware runs NetBSD itself. See our list of commercial hardware.

Emulated platforms (top)

Some of the mentioned hardware machines may be emulated (and even simulated) by various software emulators. Please refer to the section called Running NetBSD on emulated hardware for details.