Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc
$NetBSD: article.xml,v 1.1 2003/12/14 15:56:15 hrs Exp $
Abstract
The Hardware Documentation section contains links to hardware information that NetBSD users and hackers might find interesting. The links are organized into four main categories, and further subdivided, where applicable, by vendor.
If you find a link that could be handy, please let us know!
Table of Contents
Listed here are just some of the busses that NetBSD users and hackers might find interesting.
ADB - Apple Desktop Bus (Section 1.1, “ADB”)
ATA - AT Attachment (evolution of ISA/IDE) (Section 1.2, “ATA”)
DEBI - Main interface card bus on Acorn RiscPC and similar machines.
EISA - Extended Industry Standard Architecture (Section 1.3, “EISA”)
HP-IB - Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus (Section 1.4, “HP-IB”)
I2C - Philips I2C (Section 1.5, “I2C”)
IEEE1394 - Firewire, i.Link (Section 1.6, “IEEE1394”)
ISA - Industry Standard Architecture (Section 1.7, “ISA”)
Massbus - DEC, used in VAX 700 series machines
MCA - MicroChannel Architecture (Section 1.8, “MCA”)
NuBus - Apple's NuBus (Section 1.9, “NuBus”)
PCI - Peripheral Component Interconnect (Section 1.10, “PCI”)
PDS - Apple's 'Processor-Direct Slot'
Q-bus - Used in PDP, VAX, and some DECstation boxes (Section 1.11, “Q-bus”)
SCSI - Small Computer System Interface (Section 1.12, “SCSI”)
Sbus - Sun Sbus (Section 1.13, “SBUS”)
SDI - Standard Drive Interconnect
TurboChannel - DEC, used in VAXstations, DECstations, and Alphas (Section 1.14, “TurboChannel”)
Unibus - DEC, used in VAX 700 series machines
USB - Universal Serial Bus. (Section 1.15, “USB”)
VAXBI - DEC, used in VAX 6000 and 8000 series
VL-Bus - VESA Local Bus (evolution of ISA, initially for faster video)
VME - VMEbus (Section 1.16, “VME”)
XMI - DEC, used in VAX 6000, 7000, 9000, and 10000 series
Zorro - Commodore's Amiga bus. (Section 1.17, “Zorro”)
Here are some links to information about the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB), as used in Apple Macintosh machines.
Primarily describes the MacOS ADB Manager, but also how to communicate with devices on the ADB at a very low level.
Apple Technical Note explaining a number of esoteric and unknown issues concerning the Apple Desktop Bus.
Archived Apple Q&As relating to the ADB bus. Mainly MacOS specific.
Here are some links to information about the AT Attachment bus, an evolution of EISA/IDE.
The AT Attachment Technical Committee. Many drafts, specs, and proposals.
Pin assignments, register descriptions, I/O ports...
Peter den Haan's pages on Enhanced IDE (ATA-2).
Here are some links to information about IEEE1394.
Note that this doesn't include the actual IEEE1394 spec; just additions and revisions, especially for various peripherals.
Here are some links to information about the MicroChannel Architecture (MCA) bus, as used in many IBM PS/2, RS/6000, AS/400, and 370 machines.
homepage
Very basic explanation - around the time of the EISA/MCA conflict.
Misc MCA related information - more user orientated than technical.
Here are some links to information about the Q-bus, as used in DEC's PDP, VAX, and some MIPS based DECstation machines.
Detailed info on history, and working with Q-bus, by Akos Varga.
Example design and pinouts from Avalon Computer Systems.
ASCII art plus labels for pins.
Here are some links to information about SCSI.
Some links to information about the Unified Serial Bus (USB)
a USB protocol analyzer for Windows 98 and Windows 2000
It is intended to add links to information about the Zorro bus, as used in Commodore's Amiga machines (Section 3.4, “Commodore”) and Macro System Development's DraCo (Section 3.8, “Macro System Development”).
There were two types of Zorro buses:
Present in all Amiga machines; a partial version of it (slightly faster timing, no DMA) also in the DraCo.
Present in A3000 and A4000 Amiga machines.
Jens Schroder has pages with information on both the Zorro 2 and Zorro 3 busses.
Listed here are just some of the chip vendors that NetBSD users and hackers might find interesting.
Digital Equipment Corporation (Section 2.1, “Digital Equipment Corporation”)
Hewlett-Packard (Section 2.2, “Hewlett-Packard”)
International Business Machines
Intel Corporation (Section 2.3, “Intel”)
MIPS (Section 2.4, “MIPS”)
Motorola (Section 2.6, “Motorola”)
NCR/Symbios Logic
National Semiconductor (Section 2.7, “National Semiconductor”)
Silicon Integrated Systems
Texas Instruments (Section 2.8, “Texas Instruments”)
Here are some links to information about Digital Equipment Corporation chips.
NetBSD library page listing information on DEC machines.
Alpha microprocessors, core logic chipsets and motherboards.
Maintained by Chris G. Demetriou. Primarily Alpha orientated, but some DECstation, and general semiconductor chip documentation. A veritable goldmine.
The strongarm is now an Intel product.
Here are some links to information about Hewlett-Packard chips.
Provides pointers to documentation for the PA-RISC 1.1 and 2.0 architecture as used in HP9000 and HP3000 machines.
Information and technical descriptions of HP PA-RISC based systems.
Here are some links to information about Intel chips.
Includes datasheets and application notes on processors, motherboards,
Locate any intel part.
Datasheets and documents on the Strongarm CPU range (previously a Digital product).
Here are some links to information about the MIPS processor, as used in Digital DECStation, ARC, Cobalt, and SGI machines.
Instruction sets, processor user manuals, and assembly language programmer's guides.
MIPS Processor ABI Conformance Guides, version 1.0 to current.
It includes a full description of the MIPS architecture from the perspective of the assembly and C language, with special emphasis on issues releated to embedded applications. Only the preface and a couple of examples are online. Appears to cover the R3000
Instruction level simulator including X Window System's interface.
It includes the RM7000 and RM52xx (R5000 compatible) information.
Design-oriented documentation regarding the system interface of the MIPS 64-bit R4x00 processors.
It includes some MIPS manuals.
Here are some links to information about Microchip Technology chips.
EEPROMs, serial, parallel, and smart card
Here are some links to information about Motorola chips.
homepage
68000-68060, plus coldfire
documents for PowerPC CPUs, Support and Peripheal chips
Here are some links to information about National Semiconductor chips, such as the NS32532-25, the CPU used in the pc532 (Section 3.11, “PC532”)
Includes LAN and SCSI chips, such as the DP83840A (used in the Compaq ThunderLAN) and the DP5380 (NCR5380 compatible).
Descriptions and datasheets on latest member of the Series 32000 family.
Here are some links to information about Texas Instruments chips.
Includes design kits and programmer's guides. Also links to details on the TNETE100A, as used in the Compaq ThunderLAN-based ethernet board.
Listed here are just some of the system vendors that NetBSD users and hackers might find interesting.
Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) platform, from the Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) Consortium ( Section 3.1, “Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) Specification for the Advanced Computing Environment (ACE)”)
Apollo (Section 3.2, “Apollo”)
Apple (Section 3.3, “Apple”)
Commodore (Section 3.4, “Commodore”)
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) (Section 3.5, “Digital Equipment Corporation”)
Vax hardware reference
Hewlett-Packard (Section 3.6, “Hewlett-Packard”)
International Business Machines (IBM) (Section 3.7, “International Business Machines”)
MacroSystem Computer (Section 3.8, “Macro System Development”)
Motorola (Section 3.9, “Motorola Inc”)
NeXT (Section 3.10, “NeXT”)
PC532 (Section 3.11, “PC532”)
Sequent Computer Systems (Section 3.13, “Sequent”)
Sun Microsystems (Section 3.14, “Sun Microsystems”)
The Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) consortium was set up in the early 1990's by a number of companies to try and make a commodity computing platform based on MIPS processors as an alternative to the IBM-compatible Personal Computer based on Intel or Intel-compatible processors.
The ACE consortium produced the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) Specification (393K bytes, PDF), to specify hardware and firmware standards for this new computing platform.
Unfortunately, the ARC platform failed to gain a critical mass of interest, and the consortium fell apart. The effort wasn't completely wasted; Microsoft was a member of the consortium and adopted much of the ARC specification for Windows NT, though Microsoft discontinued support for MIPS processors with the release of Windows NT version 4.
The NetBSD Project supports these systems in NetBSD/arc. We make version 1.2 of the ARC specification (393K bytes, PDF) available with MIPS's permission, provided that we make clear that this is a historical document which the modern, post-SGI MIPS does in no way support.
Here are some links to information about Apollo (now defunct) computers. Hewlett-Packard bought Apollo and released the last Apollo machines as HP9000/400s, most of which can run the hp300 port of NetBSD.
homepage.
Some pictures and brief details of various Apollo workstations.
Here are some links to information about Apple Macintosh computers.
NetBSD/mac68k homepage.
NetBSD/macppc homepage.
Apple's documentation
Apple's information on all models
Device section from Technical Q&As portion of the Apple developer site. Covers writing MacOS Macintosh device drivers.
Technical hardware questions and answers on the Apple developer site.
Apple's Hardware Developer Documentation
Firmware updates for newer PowerMacintosh computers
Answers to a wide variety of questions from Apple
Other sources of information
A good set of MacBSD links to apple machine specifications and details.
Mainly user, maintenance, and upgrade related FAQs
How to speed up most macintoshes by undertiming (or 'overclocking').
Basic specifications of all the (many) macintosh models.
Here are some links to information about Commodore (now defunct) computers. Commodore made a number of 8-bit machines, but in 1985 released their first Amiga. All Amiga's used the Zorro bus (Section 1.17, “Zorro”).
NetBSD/amiga homepage.
From Convergence International.
Includes user groups, links, reviews, and classifieds.
Here are some links to information about Digital Equipment Corporation computers. Some attempt has been made to group them by machine type, but there is much overlap.
NetBSD/alpha homepage
NetBSD/pmax homepage
NetBSD/vax homepage
NetBSD "Hardware Documentation" page listing information on DEC chips.
Information compiled by Dan McMahill.
Generally VMS, Ultrix, and DU, but some hardware info.
Specifications for various alpha systems. Mainly sales orientated.
Including basic specs, CPU board lists, interface pinouts, and more.
Including technical specifications and maintenance manuals.
List of VAX hardware specifications and related information.
A summary of all VAX & Alpha CPU processors circa 1993.
Invaluable to the 11/750 owner.
Maintained by Gunnar Helliesen. (Hosted on a MicroVAX II running NetBSD).
A wealth of information and specs for MicroVAX and VAXstations.
Many detailed micronotes on the PDP11, uVAX I and II, and Q-bus.
Specifications for various VAX Systems.
One of the busses used in VAXs, PDP11s and some DECstation.
Describes the design of a dual processor VAX 11/780 built in 1981 at the Purdue University Electrical Engineering School.
Called "TPA", "stored-program analyzer"
Maintained by Dave McGuire. Primarily PDP-11 boards, though VAX information being added...
Information, maillists, simulators and disk images for v5, v6 and v7.
Also contains useful Q-bus related information.
Links to FAQs, programmers reference material, hardware references, and odds and ends including emulators.
The latest, fastest, PDP10 clone in the world.
Here are some links to information about Hewlett-Packard computers.
NetBSD/hp300 homepage.
NetBSD/hp700 homepage.
Maintained by Ross Sponholtz.
Generally HPUX OS related, but some hardware info.
Several hardware documentation for model 3xx/4xx/7xx. (Owner's Guide, reference manual etc.)
Here are some links to information about IBM (International Business Machines).
NetBSD/i386 homepage.
IBM RT information archive, hardware and AOS information.
MacroSystem Computer GmbH was well know for its audio, graphics and video boards for the Commodore Amiga machines and their video editing software. When Commodore went bankrupt, they decided to build their own machines and created the DraCo (a 68060 machine which runs AmigaOS with some replaced device drivers) and Casablanca (a cut-down version only usable for video editing).
The DraCo uses the Zorro-2 bus (Section 1.17, “Zorro”) for low-speed peripherals (e.g. network, additional serial boards etc) and a buffered local bus for the graphics and video boards.
NetBSD/Amiga was enhanced to run also on DraCo machines; first official release booting on the DraCo was NetBSD-1.2.
NetBSD/amiga homepage.
Includes user groups, links, reviews and classifieds.
Here are some links to information about Motorola Inc computers.
Pages on Convergence International.
Here are some links to information about NeXT computers.
NetBSD/next68k homepage.
Here are some links to information about the pc532, a NS32532-25 based motherboard designed in 1989 and 1990 by George Scolaro and Dave Rand.
NetBSD/pc532 homepage.
NetBSD "Hardware Documentation" page listing information on National Semiconductor chips, such as the NS32532-25 - the CPU used in the pc532.
Archives from the very start of the pc532; 1989 to present.
Here are some links to information about Sun Microsystems computers.
Various online documents by Sun Microsystems.
FAQs, hardware reference, mailing lists, patches and sun links.
An invaluable resource for Motorola m68k based suns.
Various other FAQs hosted at the Sun3/3x Archive (Also contain sparc data)
Attempted to provide information about older Sun-badged hardware and hardware commonly used with older Sun workstations. Its primary audience was buyers and collectors of used Sun hardware. It's not being updated anymore.
Hardware information, FAQs, pictures, and other information on older Sun workstations.
Primarily SunOS (4 & 5) based, but also with references to other FAQs.
Listed here are links to miscellaneous hardware information that NetBSD users and hackers might find interesting.
An introduction to connecting serial ports. Also includes information on the pinouts of some of the supported platforms
Motherboard, CPU, chipset, RAM, disk, video, BIOS, and overclocking guides. For the Intel compatible user...
Specifications and jumper information for over two thousand hard drives.
Pinouts for various comms, console, video, disk, analog, and bus interfaces.
Ethernet Network Questions and Answers.