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  &header;

  <h3>Introduction</h3>

  <p>The FreeBSD/ppc project pages contain information about the FreeBSD
    port to the PowerPC&reg; architecture.  As with the port itself, these
    pages are still a work in progress.</p>

  <h3>Table Of Contents</h3>

  <ul>
    <li><a href="#status">Status</a></li>
    <li><a href="#news">Latest News</a></li>
    <li><a href="#faq">Port FAQs</a></li>
    <li><a href="#hardware">Supported Hardware</a></li>
    <li><a href="#list">FreeBSD/ppc mailing list</a></li>
    <li><a href="#issues">Known Issues</a></li>
    <li><a href="#doc">Documentation, White Papers, Utilities</a></li>
    <li><a href="#links">Other links of interest</a></li>
  </ul>

  <h3><a name="status">Status</a></h3>

  <p>The FreeBSD/ppc port is still a
    <a href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/archs.html">
    Tier 2</a> platform.  That means it is
    not being fully supported by our security officer, release engineers and
    toolchain maintainers.<p>

  <hr noshade>

  <h3><a name="news">Latest News</a></h3>

  <ul>
    <li><strong>05 January, 2011</strong>: Support for the Sony Playstation 3
      has been committed to SVN.</li>
    <li><strong>13 July, 2010</strong>: Support for the powerpc64 architecture
      added.</li>
    <li><strong>03 March, 2008</strong>: Support for Freescale&reg;
      PowerQUICC III MPC85XX family system-on-chip development boards
      has been committed into CVS.</li>
    <li><strong>27 February, 2008</strong>: FreeBSD 7.0 is the first
      release to officially support the FreeBSD/ppc port.</li>
  </ul>

  <hr noshade>

  <h3><a name="faq">Frequently Asked Questions</a></h3>

  <ol>
    <li><a href="#1">How can I install FreeBSD/ppc</a></li>
    <li><a href="#3">How to use ports on FreeBSD/ppc?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#4">Should I install powerpc or powerpc64?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#5">Who should I contact?</a></li>
  </ol>

  <h4><a name="1">How can I install FreeBSD/ppc?</a></h4>

  <p>ISO images of FreeBSD &rel.current; suitable for New-World Macs are
    available for download, for details on how to obtain these see the
    <a href="&base;/releases/&rel.current;R/announce.html">release announcement.</a></p>

  <h4><a name="3">How to use ports on FreeBSD/ppc?</a></h4>

  <p>The easy way to use ports on FreeBSD is to use portsnap.
    Refer to the Handbook if you need assistance to
    <a href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports-using.html">use
    the Ports Collection</a>.</p>

  <h4><a name="4">Should I install powerpc or powerpc64?</a></h4>

  <p>The powerpc64 port provides a 64-bit kernel and userland, and is supported
    on all 64-bit CPUs. Users of 32-bit CPUs (G3, G4) must use the 32-bit
    powerpc platform, users of 64-bit CPUs that support 32-bit operating
    systems (G5) have a choice, and users of 64-bit CPUs that do not (Cell)
    must use powerpc64. For those users with a choice, powerpc64 provides
    some additional features (the ability to use more than 2 GB of RAM and
    ZFS support) while having slightly worse ports support due to being
    a newer and less common architecture. Like other 64-bit platforms,
    FreeBSD/powerpc64 supports running 32-bit binaries as well as 64-bit ones.
    </p>

  <h4><a name="5">Who should I contact?</a></h4>

  <p><a href="mailto:grehan@FreeBSD.org">Peter Grehan</a> is the project
    leader.  Contact him if you can contribute code.  If you just want
    to know about the status of this project, check this page
    regularly or join the
    <a href="#list">FreeBSD/ppc mailing list</a>.</p>

  <hr noshade>

  <h3><a name="hardware">Supported Hardware</a></h3>

  <p>The FreeBSD/ppc port should run on any New-World Apple machine (any Apple
    machine with a built-in USB port), as well as the Sony Playstation 3. A
    port to IBM pSeries hardware is in progress. People reported FreeBSD runs
    on following machines:</p>

  <table class="tblbasic">
    <tr class="heading">
      <th>Manufacturer</th>
      <th>Model</th>
      <th>Submitter (optional links)</th>
      <th>Notes</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>iMac G3 350 MHz</td>
      <td><a href="mailto:diskiller@diskiller.net">Martin Minkus</a></td>
      <td>Rage 128VR</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>iMac G3 DV Special Edition</td>
      <td><a href="mailto:webmaster@machowto.com">David S. Besade</a>
	(<a href="http://people.freebsd.org/~flz/local/dmesg.ppc">dmesg</a>)</td>
      <td>None</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>iMac G3 Revision B</td>
      <td><a href="mailto:grehan@FreeBSD.org">Peter Grehan</a></td>
      <td>Rage 3D Pro 215GP, accel disabled</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>eMac 700 MHz</td>
      <td><a href="mailto:grehan@FreeBSD.org">Peter Grehan</a></td>
      <td>Nvidia GeForce2 MX</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>Mac Mini G4 1.4 GHz</td>
      <td><a href="mailto:arved@FreeBSD.org">Tilman Linneweh</a>
	(<a href="http://people.freebsd.org/~arved/stuff/minimac">dmesg</a>)</td>
      <td>None</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>Powerbook G4 1.33 GHz</td>
      <td><a href="mailto:grehan@FreeBSD.org">Peter Grehan</a></td>
      <td>Nvidia GeForce G5200</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>Aluminium Powerbook G4 1.5 GHz</td>
      <td><a href="mailto:toa@pop.agri.ch">Andreas Tobler</a></td>
      <td>None</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>PowerMac G5</td>
      <td></td>
      <td>FreeBSD 8.0</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>iMac G5</td>
      <td></td>
      <td>FreeBSD 8.0</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>Xserve G5</td>
      <td></td>
      <td>FreeBSD 8.1</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>PowerMac G5 (late 2005)</td>
      <td></td>
      <td>FreeBSD 8.1</td>
    </tr>
  </table>

  <hr noshade>

  <h3><a name="list">FreeBSD/ppc mailing list</a></h3>

  <p>To subscribe to this list, send an email to <tt class="EMAIL">
    &#60;<a href="mailto:freebsd-ppc-subscribe@FreeBSD.org">freebsd-ppc-subscribe@FreeBSD.org</a>&#62;</tt>
    or visit the
    <a href="http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ppc">mailman
    interface</a>.</p>

  <hr noshade>

  <h3><a name="issues">Known Issues</a></h3>

  <ul>
    <li>There is a known bug in the boot-loader, that prevents you from
      loading an alternate kernel, so testing your kernel is a bit risky.
      When booting the loader from the Open Firmware prompt, give it a
      partition which is either non-existent, doesn't have a kernel to load,
      or isn't a UFS partition:
      <pre>0 > boot hd:loader hd:0</pre>
      At this point, you can set currdev and manually load a kernel:
      <pre>OK set currdev=hd:14
OK load /boot/kernel/kernel.save</pre>
    </li>
  </ul>

  <hr noshade>

  <h3><a name="doc">Documentation, White Papers, Utilities</a></h3>

  <ul>
    <li><a href="http://www.freescale.com/files/product/doc/MPCFPE32B.pdf">
      PowerPC chip documentation</a></li>

    <li><a href="http://www.firmworks.com/QuickRef.html">
      Open Firmware Quick Reference</a></li>

    <li><a href="https://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/#technotes/tn/tn1061.html">
      "TN1061: Fundamentals of Open Firmware, Part 1 - The User
      Interface"</a></li>

    <li><a href="https://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/#technotes/tn/tn1062.html">
      "TN1062: Fundamentals of Open Firmware, Part 2 - The Device
      Tree"</a></li>

    <li><a href="http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/navigation/">
      Apple hardware developer docs</a></li>

    <li><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080514111646/http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2004.html">
      "TN2004: Debugging Open Firmware Using Telnet"</a></li>

    <li><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080509173539/http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2023.html">
      "TN2023: Open Firmware Ethernet Debugging II - Telnet Downloading"
      </a></li>

    <li><a href="http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/#technotes/tn/tn2001.html">
      "TN2001: Running Files from a Hard Drive in Open Firmware"</a></li>
    
    <li><a href="http://sourceware.org/psim/">psim</a> - A PowerPC
      simulator, available as a FreeBSD port at
      <a href="http://www.freshports.org/?package=psim-freebsd">
      emulators/psim-freebsd</a></li>
  </ul>

  <h3><a name="links">Other Links of Interest</a></h3>

  <ul>
    <li><a href="http://wiki.freebsd.org/powerpc">FreeBSD/ppc
      wiki page</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ppc/2005-January/000814.html">
      Garance A. Drosehn's description about FreeBSD on the Mac
      Mini</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://www.NetBSD.org/Ports/macppc/">NetBSD/macppc</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://www.OpenBSD.org/macppc.html">OpenBSD/macppc</a></li>
  </ul>

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