NetBSD and NuBus cards

[MidnightCommando]

Hello! It's once again "Stupid questions from Horst" time. 

Has NetBSD ever published any data about what NuBus cards they support? More specifically, does anyone know if NetBSD on a IIci will be able to use a graphics card like the Macintosh Display Card 24AC? 

Attempting to get around the NetBSD site for this information is a positively Thesian task; or maybe I'm just bad at it. Sure would be nice to know, though, because I doubt many people would want to be hamstrung by the vampire-video.  

 

[Gorgonops]

Wow, there's a lot of broken links on the Netbsd.org page these days...

Your best bet is probably the INSTALL document although it doesn't say much, IE:

"Most basic NuBus video cards (there have been some problems with some 24-bit color cards and with most QuickDraw accelerators)"

The "QuickDraw Accelerator" part may rule out the 24AC; it's possible it'll work anyway but the acceleration functions obviously aren't going to do anything. Note that last I was aware of X11 support with Mac68k NetBSD was rudimentary; a lot of the documentation still refers to only supporting 1-bit color and no support for mode switching after boot, but, well... there's a couple people here who'd know better than me if there's been any movement on those issues. I think most people who install NetBSD on these things use them as servers.

 

[johnklos]

Many cards are supported by NetBSD as simple dumb framebuffers. You can use most cards to avoid vampire video, yes. We count on Mac OS to set up the hardware which gets handed over to NetBSD.

 

[uridium]

I'm running NetBSD on a variety of crufty old systems. 601 PPC mac's won't work with NetBSD.

 

[uridium]

I'd like to correct myself.

NetBSD does support PPC601 now. :>

 

[Melkhior]

NetBSD supports PPC601, but isn't that only for PCI-based Power Macs ? (i.e. 7200 & non-upgraded 7500)
As far as I know, there's still no support for NuBus-based Power Macs (6100/7100/8100) in NetBSD :-(