. .Nx*M \*V runs on several of the older Macintosh computers. About 4 MB of RAM might be sufficient to boot, and the system can probably be squeezed onto a 40 MB hard disk by leaving off an unnecessary set or two. To actually do much compiling or anything more interesting than booting, at least 8 MB of RAM and more disk space is recommended. About 95 MB will be necessary to install all of the .Nx \*V binary system distribution sets (note that this does not count swap space!). An additional 30 MB or so is needed for the binary X11 distribution sets. Much more disk space is required to install the source and objects as well (at least another 300 MB). . .Ss2 Supported models .(bullet -compact -offset indent Mac II, IIx, IIcx, SE/30, IIci, IIsi, IIvx, IIvi t Performa 400/405/410/430, Performa 450, Performa 460/466/467 t Performa 520, Performa 550/560, Performa 600 t LC II, LC III, LC III+, LC 520, LC 550 t MacTV t Centris 650 t Quadra 610, Quadra 630, Quadra 650, Quadra 700, Quadra 800 t Quadra/Centris 660AV, Quadra 840AV .bullet) . .Ss2 Supported devices .(bullet -compact -offset indent Onboard SCSI bus and most SCSI tapes, hard drives, and CD-ROMs t Internal sound - enough to beep on some machines, anyway t Most basic NuBus video cards (there have been some problems with some 24-bit color cards and with most QuickDraw acclerators) t Both internal serial ports t ADB keyboards and mice (both Apple and a number of third party multi-button mice and trackballs are supported) t Ethernet cards based on the National Semiconductor 8390 and the SONIC (DP83932) chips (Asante, Apple, and a few others - problems still with Ethernet and many NuBus video cards) t Ethernet cards based on the SMC 91c92 and 91c100 (FEAST) chips. This includes the AsanteFAST 10/100 cards t Onboard Ethernet based on the SONIC chip for Quadra-series Macs t Onboard Ethernet based on the MACE (Am79C940) chip for the Quadra AV-series Macs t Comm-slot Ethernet should be working for most machines/cards .bullet)
p If your 68030 system is not listed above, it may be because of a problem with accessing onboard video, and it may still work with a serial console. Some of the known ones in this category: .(bullet -compact -offset indent Classic-series Macs t PowerBook 100-series and Duo-series Macs .bullet)
p If your 68LC040 system is not listed above, it is due to a problem with floating point emulation (FPE) for this type of processor. Machines in this category include: .(bullet -compact -offset indent Newer LC-series machines t Newer Performa-series machines t Some PowerBook 500-series Macs .bullet) . .Ss2 Unsupported models .(bullet -offset indent Macintosh IIfx
p This machine has unusual custom chips for the ADB and serial interfaces which make support for it difficult. Work is in progress on this, though. t Quadra 900/950
p These machines have I/O processor chips for their ADB interfaces similar to those used in the IIfx and thus face similar support problems. t PowerPC-based Macs
p This is a separate effort from the \*M port. PowerMacs use hardware that is often fairly different from that of the \*M port. If you are interested in this, you might want to take a look at the new .Nx Ns /macppc port: .Lk http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/index.html .bullet) . .Ss2 Known hardware issues with this release .(bullet -offset indent Real Time Clock
p Due to oddities of the Macintosh hardware interrupt priority scheme, .Nx*M keeps very poor time. Under a high interrupt load (e.g. SCSI or serial port activity) , a machine can lose several minutes per hour. A consequence of this problem is that attempting to run c xntpd is rather pointless unless you periodically call c ntpdate . t SCSI difficulties
p The .Nx*M SCSI drivers are not quite as robust as their .Tn MacOS counterparts. Symptoms of these problems are that some SCSI disks will not work under NetBSD that work fine under .Tn MacOS . Other problems include occasional file system corruption with some types of drives and the general unreliability of removable SCSI media. Keep in mind that there are no clear patterns with these problems, and they do not appear to affect the majority of users. .bullet)
Indexes created Sat Nov 08 18:09:48 GMT 2025