NAME
intro —
introduction to prep special
files and hardware support
DESCRIPTION
This section describes the special files, related driver functions, and
networking support available in the system. In this part of the manual, the
SYNOPSIS section of each configurable device gives a sample specification for
use in constructing a system description for the
config(1) program. The
DIAGNOSTICS section lists messages which may appear on the console and/or in
the system error log
/var/log/messages due to errors in
device operation; see
syslogd(8) for more
information.
This section contains both devices which may be configured into the system and
network related information. The networking support is introduced in
netintro(4).
PMPPC DEVICE SUPPORT
This section describes the hardware supported on the PowerPC Reference Platform
machines. Software support for these devices comes in two forms. A hardware
device may be supported with a character or block
device
driver, or it may be used within the networking subsystem and have a
network interface driver. Block and character devices are
accessed through files in the file system of a special type; see
mknod(8). Network interfaces
are indirectly accessed through the interprocess communication facilities
provided by the system; see
socket(2).
A hardware device is identified to the system at configuration time and the
appropriate device or network interface driver is then compiled into the
system. When the resultant system is booted, the autoconfiguration facilities
in the system probe for the device and, if found, enable the software support
for it. If a device does not respond at autoconfiguration time it is not
accessible at any time afterwards. To enable a device which did not
autoconfigure, the system will have to be rebooted.
The autoconfiguration system is described in
autoconf(4). A list of the
supported devices is given below.
SEE ALSO
config(1),
autoconf(4),
pnpbus(4),
prep/nvram(4)
HISTORY
The prep
intro man page first appeared in
NetBSD 4.0.
LIST OF DEVICES
The devices listed below are supported in this incarnation of the system.
Devices are indicated by their functional interface. Not all supported devices
are listed.
The pnpbus is a pseudo-bus which is a configuration interface for certain
devices on PReP machines. These devices are defined in the PReP residual data
with configuration information, similar to
isapnp(4). The underlying bus
is generally ISA.
ISA devices are supported through the
isa(4) bus and associated
devices.
PCI devices are supported through the
pci(4) bus and associated
devices.
USB devices are supported through the
usb(4) bus and associated
devices.
Additionally, the following specific devices are supported:
- com
- serial ports
- nvram
- NVRAM chip
- wdc
- ISA IDE controller
- we
- Western Digital/SMC WD80x3 ethernet driver
- mcclock
- mc146818 compatible time-of-day clock
- mkclock
- Mostek MK48T18 time-of-day chip