PC Hardware compatibility

Issues of hardware compatibility are among the most troublesome in the computer industry today and FreeBSD is by no means immune to trouble. In this respect, FreeBSD's advantage of being able to run on inexpensive commodity PC hardware is also its liability when it comes to support for the amazing variety of components on the market. While it would be impossible to provide a exhaustive listing of hardware that FreeBSD supports, this section serves as a catalog of the device drivers included with FreeBSD and the hardware each drivers supports. Where possible and appropriate, notes about specific products are included. You may also want to refer to section in this handbook for a list of supported devices. As FreeBSD is a volunteer project without a funded testing department, we depend on you, the user, for much of the information contained in this catalog. If you have direct experience of hardware that does or does not work with FreeBSD, please let us know by sending e-mail to the &a.doc;. Questions about supported hardware should be directed to the &a.questions (see for more information). When submitting information or asking a question, please remember to specify exactly what version of FreeBSD you are using and include as many details of your hardware as possible. Resources on the Internet

The following links have proven useful in selecting hardware. Though some of what you see won't necessarily be specific (or even applicable) to FreeBSD, most of the hardware information out there is OS independent. Please check with the FreeBSD hardware guide to make sure that your chosen configuration is supported before making any purchases.

Sample Configurations

The following list of sample hardware configurations by no means constitutes an endorsement of a given hardware vendor or product by The FreeBSD Project. This information is provided only as a public service and merely catalogs some of the experiences that various individuals have had with different hardware combinations. Your mileage may vary. Slippery when wet. Beware of dog. Jordan's Picks

I have had fairly good luck building workstation and server configurations with the following components. I can't guarantee that you will too, nor that any of the companies here will remain "best buys" forever. I will try, when I can, to keep this list up-to-date but cannot obviously guarantee that it will be at any given time. Motherboards

For Pentium Pro (P6) systems, I'm quite fond of the S1668 dual-processor motherboard as well as the Intel PR440FX motherboard with on-board SCSI WIDE and 100/10MB Intel Etherexpress NIC. You can build a dandy little single or dual processor system (which is supported in FreeBSD 3.0) for very little cost now that the Pentium Pro 180/256K chips have fallen so greatly in price, but no telling how much longer this will last.

For the Pentium II, I'm rather partial to the motherboard with the on-board Adaptec SCSI WIDE controller.

For Pentium machines, the ASUS motherboard appears to be a good choice for a mid-to-high range Pentium server or workstation system. Those wishing to build more fault-tolerant systems should also be sure to use Parity memory or, for truly 24/7 applications, ECC memory. Note that ECC memory does involve a slight performance trade-off (which may or may not be noticeable depending on your application) but buys you significantly increased fault-tolerance to memory errors. Disk Controllers

This one is a bit trickier, and while I used to recommend the controllers unilaterally for everything from ISA to PCI, now I tend to lean towards the 1542CF for ISA, Buslogic Bt747c for EISA and Adaptec 2940UW for PCI. The NCR/Symbios cards for PCI have also worked well for me, though you need to make sure that your motherboard supports the BIOS-less model if you're using one of those (if your card has nothing which looks even vaguely like a ROM chip on it, you've probably got one which expects its BIOS to be on your motherboard).

If you should find that you need more than one SCSI controller in a PCI machine, you may wish to consider conserving your scarce PCI bus resources by buying the Adaptec 3940 card, which puts two SCSI controllers (and internal busses) in a single slot. Note that there are two types of 3940 on the market - the older model with AIC 7880 chips on it, and the newer one with AIC 7895 chips. The newer model requires support which is not yet a part of FreeBSD - you have to add it, or install from one of the CAM binary snapshot releases (follow the URL).

Disk drives

In this particular game of Russian roulette, I'll make few specific recommendations except to say "SCSI over IDE whenever you can afford it." Even in small desktop configurations, SCSI often makes more sense since it allows you to easily migrate drives from server to desktop as falling drive prices make it economical to do so. If you have more than one machine to administer then think of it not simply as storage, think of it as a food chain! For a serious server configuration, there's not even any argument - use SCSI equipment and good cables. :)

CDROM drives

My SCSI preferences extend to SCSI CDROM drives as well, and while the drives have always been favorites of mine (in whatever speed is hot that week), I'm still fond of my good old PX-12CS drive. It's only a 12 speed, but it's offered excellent performance and reliability.

Generally speaking, most SCSI CDROM drives I've seen have been of pretty solid construction and you probably won't go wrong with an HP or NEC SCSI CDROM drive either. SCSI CDROM prices also appear to have dropped considerably in the last few months and are now quite competitive with IDE CDROMs while remaining a technically superior solution. I now see no reason whatsoever to settle for an IDE CDROM drive if given a choice between the two.

CD Recordable (WORM) drives

At the time of this writing, FreeBSD supports 3 types of CDR drives (though I believe they all ultimately come from Phillips anyway): The Phillips CDD 522 (Acts like a Plasmon), the PLASMON RF4100 and the HP 6020i. I myself use the HP 6020i for burning CDROMs (in 2.2 and later releases - it does not work with earlier releases of the SCSI code) and it works very well. See on your system for example scripts used to created ISO9660 filesystem images (with RockRidge extensions) and burn them onto an HP6020i CDR.

Tape drives

I've had pretty good luck with both from and drives from .

For backup purposes, I'd have to give the higher recommendation to the Exabyte due to the more robust nature (and higher storage capacity) of 8mm tape. Video Cards

If you can also afford to buy a commercial X server for US$99 from then I can heartily recommend the cards. Note that support for this card is also very good with the server, which is now at version 3.3.2.

You also certainly can't go wrong with one of cards - their S3 Vision 868 and 968 based cards (the 9FX series) also being quite fast and very well supported by XFree86's S3 server in addition to being extremely cheap, nowadays. You can also pick up their Revolution 3D cards very cheaply these days, especially if you require a lot of video memory.

Monitors

I have had very good luck with the , as have I with the Viewsonic offering in the same (Trinitron) tube. For larger than 17", all I can recommend at the time of this writing is to not spend any less than U.S. $2,000 for a 21" monitor or $1,700 for a 20" monitor if that's what you really need. There are good monitors available in the >=20" range and there are also cheap monitors in the >=20" range. Unfortunately, very few are both cheap and good!

Networking

I can recommend the Intel EtherExpress Pro/100B card first and foremost, followed by the Ultra 16 controller for ISA applications and the SMC SMC9332DST, SMC EtherPower or Compex ENET32 cards for slightly cheaper PCI based networking. In general, any PCI NIC based around DEC's DC2104x Ethernet controller chip, such as the Zynx ZX342 or DEC DE435, will generally work quite well and can frequently be found in 2-port and 4-port versions (useful for firewalls and routers), though the Pro/100B card has the edge when it comes to providing the best performance with the lowest overhead.

If what you're looking for is the cheapest possible solution, on the other hand, then almost any NE2000 clone will do a fine job for very little cost.

Serial

If you're looking for high-speed serial networking solutions, then makes the series, with drivers now in FreeBSD-current. also manufactures a board with T1/E1 capabilities, using software they provide. I have no direct experience using either product, however.

Multiport card options are somewhat more numerous, though it has to be said that FreeBSD's support for 's products is probably the tightest, primarily as a result of that company's commitment to making sure that we are adequately supplied with evaluation boards and technical specs. I've heard that the Cyclom-16Ye offers the best price/performance, though I've not checked the prices lately. Other multiport cards I've heard good things about are the BOCA and AST cards, and apparently offers an unofficial driver for their cards at location. Audio

I currently use a AWE32 though just about anything from Creative Labs will generally work these days. This is not to say that other types of sound cards don't also work, simply that I have little experience with them (I was a former GUS fan, but Gravis's soundcard situation has been dire for some time).

Video

For video capture, there are two good choices - any card based on the Brooktree BT848 chip, such as the Hauppage or WinTV boards, will work very nicely with FreeBSD. Another board which works for me is the card. FreeBSD also supports the older video spigot card from Creative Labs, but those are getting somewhat difficult to find. Note that the Meteor frame grabber card will not work with motherboards based on the 440FX chipset! See the section for details. In such cases, it's better to go with a BT848 based board.

Core/Processing Motherboards, busses, and chipsets * ISA * EISA * VLB PCI

Contributed by &a.obrien; from postings by &a.rgrimes;. 25 April 1995.

Continuing updates by &a.jkh;.Last update on 26 August 1996.

Of the Intel PCI chip sets, the following list describes various types of known-brokenness and the degree of breakage, listed from worst to best.

Mercury: Cache coherency problems, especially if there are ISA bus masters behind the ISA to PCI bridge chip. Hardware flaw, only known work around is to turn the cache off. Saturn-I (ie, 82424ZX at rev 0, 1 or 2): Write back cache coherency problems. Hardware flaw, only known work around is to set the external cache to write-through mode. Upgrade to Saturn-II. Saturn-II (ie, 82424ZX at rev 3 or 4): Works fine, but many MB manufactures leave out the external dirty bit SRAM needed for write back operation. Work arounds are either run it in write through mode, or get the dirty bit SRAM installed. (I have these for the ASUS PCI/I-486SP3G rev 1.6 and later boards). Neptune: Can not run more than 2 bus master devices. Admitted Intel design flaw. Workarounds include do not run more than 2 bus masters, special hardware design to replace the PCI bus arbiter (appears on Intel Altair board and several other Intel server group MB's). And of course Intel's official answer, move to the Triton chip set, we ``fixed it there''. Triton (ie, 430FX): No known cache coherency or bus master problems, chip set does not implement parity checking. Workaround for parity issue. Use Triton-II based motherboards if you have the choice. Triton-II (ie, 430HX): All reports on motherboards using this chipset have been favorable so far. No known problems. Orion: Early versions of this chipset suffered from a PCI write-posting bug which can cause noticeable performance degradation in applications where large amounts of PCI bus traffic is involved. B0 stepping or later revisions of the chipset fixed this problem. :This support chipset seems to work well, and does not suffer from any of the early Orion chipset problems. It also supports a wider variety of memory, including ECC and parity. The only known problem with it is that the Matrox Meteor frame grabber card doesn't like it.

CPUs/FPUs

Contributed by &a.asami;.26 December 1997.

P6 class (Pentium Pro/Pentium II)

Both the Pentium Pro and Pentium II work fine with FreeBSD. In fact, our main ftp site (also known as "ftp.cdrom.com", world's largest ftp site) runs FreeBSD on a Pentium Pro. are available for interested parties. Pentium class

The Intel Pentium (P54C), Pentium MMX (P55C), AMD K6 and Cyrix/IBM 6x86MX processors are all reported to work with FreeBSD. I will not go into details of which processor is faster than what, there are zillions of web sites on the Internet that tells you one way or another. :)

Note that various CPUs have different voltage/cooling requirements. Make sure your motherboard can supply the exact voltage needed by the CPU. For instance, many recent MMX chips require split voltage (e.g., 2.9V core, 3.3V I/O). Also, some AMD and Cyrix/IBM chips run hotter than Intel chips. In that case, make sure you have good heatsink/fans (you can get the list of certified parts from their web pages). Clock speeds

Contributed by &a.rgrimes;.1 October 1996.

Updated by &a.asami;.27 December 1997.

Pentium class machines use different clock speeds for the various parts of the system. These being the speed of the CPU, external memory bus, and the PCI bus. It is not always true that a "faster" processor will make a system faster than a "slower" one, due to the various clock speeds used. Below is a table showing the differences:

Rated External Clock External to PCI Bus CPU and Memory Bus Internal Clock Clock MHz MHz** Multiplier MHz 60 60 1.0 30 66 66 1.0 33 75 50 1.5 25 90 60 1.5 30 100 50* 2 25 100 66 1.5 33 120 60 2 30 133 66 2 33 150 60 2.5 30 (Intel, AMD) 150 75 2 37.5 (Cyrix/IBM 6x86MX) 166 66 2.5 33 180 60 3 30 200 66 3 33 233 66 3.5 33 * The Pentium 100 can be run at either 50MHz external clock with a multiplier of 2 or at 66MHz and a multiplier of 1.5. ** 66 MHz may actually be 66.667 MHz, but don't assume so.

As can be seen the best parts to be using are the 100, 133, 166, 200 and 233, with the exception that at a multiplier of 3 or more the CPU starves for memory. The AMD K6 Bug

In 1997, there have been reports of the AMD K6 seg faulting during heavy compilation. That problem has been fixed in 3Q '97. According to reports, K6 chips with date mark "9733" or larger (i.e., manufactured in the 33rd week of '97 or later) do not have this bug. * 486 class * 386 class 286 class

Sorry, FreeBSD does not run on 80286 machines. It is nearly impossible to run today's large full-featured UNIXes on such hardware. * Memory

The minimum amount of memory you must have to install FreeBSD is 5 MB. Once your system is up and running you can that will use less memory. If you use the boot4.flp you can get away with having only 4 MB. * BIOS Input/Output Devices * Video cards * Sound cards Serial ports and multiport cards &uart; &sio; &cy; * Parallel ports * Modems * Network cards * Keyboards * Mice * Other Storage Devices &esdi; &scsi; * Disk/tape controllers * SCSI * IDE * Floppy Hard drives &scsihd; * IDE hard drives Tape drives

Contributed by &a.jmb;.2 July 1996.

General tape access commands

mt(1) provides generic access to the tape drives. Some of the more common commands are rewind, erase, and status. See the mt(1) manual page for a detailed description. Controller Interfaces

There are several different interfaces that support tape drives. The interfaces are SCSI, IDE, Floppy and Parallel Port. A wide variety of tape drives are available for these interfaces. Controllers are discussed in SCSI drives

The st(4) driver provides support for 8mm (Exabyte), 4mm (DAT: Digital Audio Tape), QIC (Quarter-Inch Cartridge), DLT (Digital Linear Tape), QIC Minicartridge and 9-track (remember the big reels that you see spinning in Hollywood computer rooms) tape drives. See the st(4) manual page for a detailed description.

The drives listed below are currently being used by members of the FreeBSD community. They are not the only drives that will work with FreeBSD. They just happen to be the ones that we use. 4mm (DAT: Digital Audio Tape)

8mm (Exabyte)

QIC (Quarter-Inch Cartridge)

DLT (Digital Linear Tape)

Mini-Cartridge

Autoloaders/Changers

* IDE drives Floppy drives

* Parallel port drives Detailed Information

The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE ANCDA 2750 28077 -003 type 1 removable SCSI 2"

This is a QIC tape drive.

Native capacity is 1.35GB when using QIC-1350 tapes. This drive will read and write QIC-150 (DC6150), QIC-250 (DC6250), and QIC-525 (DC6525) tapes as well.

Data transfer rate is 350kB/s using dump(8). Rates of 530kB/s have been reported when using

Production of this drive has been discontinued.

The SCSI bus connector on this tape drive is reversed from that on most other SCSI devices. Make sure that you have enough SCSI cable to twist the cable one-half turn before and after the Archive Anaconda tape drive, or turn your other SCSI devices upside-down.

Two kernel code changes are required to use this drive. This drive will not work as delivered.

If you have a SCSI-2 controller, short jumper 6. Otherwise, the drive behaves are a SCSI-1 device. When operating as a SCSI-1 device, this drive, "locks" the SCSI bus during some tape operations, including: fsf, rewind, and rewoffl.

If you are using the NCR SCSI controllers, patch the file /usr/src/sys/pci/ncr.c (as shown below). Build and install a new kernel. *** 4831,4835 **** }; ! if (np->latetime>4) { /* ** Although we tried to wake it up, --- 4831,4836 ---- }; ! if (np->latetime>1200) { /* ** Although we tried to wake it up,

Reported by: &a.jmb;

The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE Python 28454-XXX4ASB" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "density code 0x8c, 512-byte blocks"

This is a DDS-1 tape drive.

Native capacity is 2.5GB on 90m tapes.

Data transfer rate is XXX.

This drive was repackaged by Sun Microsystems as model 411.

Reported by: Bob Bishop rb@gid.co.uk

The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE VIPER 60 21116 -007" "type 1 removable SCSI 1"

This is a QIC tape drive.

Native capacity is 60MB.

Data transfer rate is XXX.

Production of this drive has been discontinued.

Reported by: Philippe Regnauld regnauld@hsc.fr

The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE VIPER 150 21531 -004" "Archive Viper 150 is a known rogue" "type 1 removable SCSI 1". A multitude of firmware revisions exist for this drive. Your drive may report different numbers (e.g "21247 -005".

This is a QIC tape drive.

Native capacity is 150/250MB. Both 150MB (DC6150) and 250MB (DC6250) tapes have the recording format. The 250MB tapes are approximately 67% longer than the 150MB tapes. This drive can read 120MB tapes as well. It can not write 120MB tapes.

Data transfer rate is 100kB/s

This drive reads and writes DC6150 (150MB) and DC6250 (250MB) tapes.

This drives quirks are known and pre-compiled into the scsi tape device driver (st(4)).

Under FreeBSD 2.2-current, use mt blocksize 512 to set the blocksize. (The particular drive had firmware revision 21247 -005. Other firmware revisions may behave differently) Previous versions of FreeBSD did not have this problem.

Production of this drive has been discontinued.

Reported by: Pedro A M Vazquez vazquez@IQM.Unicamp.BR

Mike Smith msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au

The boot message identifier for this drive is "ARCHIVE VIPER 2525 25462 -011" "type 1 removable SCSI 1"

This is a QIC tape drive.

Native capacity is 525MB.

Data transfer rate is 180kB/s at 90 inches/sec.

The drive reads QIC-525, QIC-150, QIC-120 and QIC-24 tapes. Writes QIC-525, QIC-150, and QIC-120.

Firmware revisions prior to "25462 -011" are bug ridden and will not function properly.

Production of this drive has been discontinued.

The boot message identifier for this drive is "Conner tape".

This is a floppy controller, minicartridge tape drive.

Native capacity is XXXX

Data transfer rate is XXX

The drive uses QIC-80 tape cartridges.

Reported by: Mark Hannon mark@seeware.DIALix.oz.au

The boot message identifier for this drive is "CONNER CTMS 3200 7.00" "type 1 removable SCSI 2".

This is a minicartridge tape drive.

Native capacity is XXXX

Data transfer rate is XXX

The drive uses QIC-3080 tape cartridges.

Reported by: Thomas S. Traylor tst@titan.cs.mci.com

The boot message identifier for this drive is "DEC TZ87 (C) DEC 9206" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "density code 0x19"

This is a DLT tape drive.

Native capacity is 10GB.

This drive supports hardware data compression.

Data transfer rate is 1.2MB/s.

This drive is identical to the Quantum DLT2000. The drive firmware can be set to emulate several well-known drives, including an Exabyte 8mm drive.

Reported by: &a.wilko;

The boot message identifier for this drive is "EXABYTE EXB-2501"

This is a mini-cartridge tape drive.

Native capacity is 1GB when using MC3000XL minicartridges.

Data transfer rate is XXX

This drive can read and write DC2300 (550MB), DC2750 (750MB), MC3000 (750MB), and MC3000XL (1GB) minicartridges.

WARNING: This drive does not meet the SCSI-2 specifications. The drive locks up completely in response to a SCSI MODE_SELECT command unless there is a formatted tape in the drive. Before using this drive, set the tape blocksize with mt -f /dev/st0ctl.0 blocksize 1024 Before using a minicartridge for the first time, the minicartridge must be formated. FreeBSD 2.1.0-RELEASE and earlier: /sbin/scsi -f /dev/rst0.ctl -s 600 -c "4 0 0 0 0 0" (Alternatively, fetch a copy of the scsiformat shell script from FreeBSD 2.1.5/2.2.) FreeBSD 2.1.5 and later: /sbin/scsiformat -q -w /dev/rst0.ctl

Right now, this drive cannot really be recommended for FreeBSD.

Reported by: Bob Beaulieu ez@eztravel.com

The boot message identifier for this drive is "EXABYTE EXB-8200 252X" "type 1 removable SCSI 1"

This is an 8mm tape drive.

Native capacity is 2.3GB.

Data transfer rate is 270kB/s.

This drive is fairly slow in responding to the SCSI bus during boot. A custom kernel may be required (set SCSI_DELAY to 10 seconds).

There are a large number of firmware configurations for this drive, some have been customized to a particular vendor's hardware. The firmware can be changed via EPROM replacement.

Production of this drive has been discontinued.

Reported by: Mike Smith msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au

The boot message identifier for this drive is "EXABYTE EXB-8500-85Qanx0 0415" "type 1 removable SCSI 2"

This is an 8mm tape drive.

Native capacity is 5GB.

Data transfer rate is 300kB/s.

Reported by: Greg Lehey grog@lemis.de

The boot message identifier for this drive is "EXABYTE EXB-85058SQANXR1 05B0" "type 1 removable SCSI 2"

This is an 8mm tape drive which supports compression, and is upward compatible with the EXB-5200 and EXB-8500.

Native capacity is 5GB.

The drive supports hardware data compression.

Data transfer rate is 300kB/s.

Reported by: Glen Foster gfoster@gfoster.com

The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP C1533A 9503" "type 1 removable SCSI 2".

This is a DDS-2 tape drive. DDS-2 means hardware data compression and narrower tracks for increased data capacity.

Native capacity is 4GB when using 120m tapes. This drive supports hardware data compression.

Data transfer rate is 510kB/s.

This drive is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore 6000eU and 6000i tape drives and C1533A DDS-2 DAT drive.

The drive has a block of 8 dip switches. The proper settings for FreeBSD are: 1 ON; 2 ON; 3 OFF; 4 ON; 5 ON; 6 ON; 7 ON; 8 ON. switch 1 2 Result ON ON Compression enabled at power-on, with host control ON OFF Compression enabled at power-on, no host control OFF ON Compression disabled at power-on; the host is allowed to control compression OFF OFF Compression disabled at power-on, no host control

Switch 3 controls MRS (Media Recognition System). MRS tapes have stripes on the transparent leader. These identify the tape as DDS (Digital Data Storage) grade media. Tapes that do not have the stripes will be treated as write-protected. Switch 3 OFF enables MRS. Switch 3 ON disables MRS.

See and for more information on configuring this drive.

Warning: Quality control on these drives varies greatly. One FreeBSD core-team member has returned 2 of these drives. Neither lasted more than 5 months.

Reported by: &a.se;

The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP HP35470A T503" type 1 removable SCSI 2" "Sequential-Access density code 0x13, variable blocks".

This is a DDS-1 tape drive. DDS-1 is the original DAT tape format.

Native capacity is 2GB when using 90m tapes.

Data transfer rate is 183kB/s.

The same mechanism is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore tape drive, C35470A DDS format DAT drive, C1534A DDS format DAT drive and HP C1536A DDS format DAT drive.

The HP C1534A DDS format DAT drive has two indicator lights, one green and one amber. The green one indicates tape action: slow flash during load, steady when loaded, fast flash during read/write operations. The amber one indicates warnings: slow flash when cleaning is required or tape is nearing the end of its useful life, steady indicates an hard fault. (factory service required?)

Reported by Gary Crutcher gcrutchr@nightflight.com

The boot message identifier for this drive is "".

This is a DDS-2 tape drive with a tape changer. DDS-2 means hardware data compression and narrower tracks for increased data capacity.

Native capacity is 24GB when using 120m tapes. This drive supports hardware data compression.

Data transfer rate is 510kB/s (native).

This drive is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore tape drive.

The drive has two selectors on the rear panel. The selector closer to the fan is SCSI id. The other selector should be set to 7.

There are four internal switches. These should be set: 1 ON; 2 ON; 3 ON; 4 OFF.

At present the kernel drivers do not automatically change tapes at the end of a volume. This shell script can be used to change tapes: #!/bin/sh PATH="/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin"; export PATH usage() { echo "Usage: dds_changer [123456ne] raw-device-name echo "1..6 = Select cartridge" echo "next cartridge" echo "eject magazine" exit 2 } if [ $# -ne 2 ] ; then usage fi cdb3=0 cdb4=0 cdb5=0 case $1 in [123456]) cdb3=$1 cdb4=1 ;; n) ;; e) cdb5=0x80 ;; ?) usage ;; esac scsi -f $2 -s 100 -c "1b 0 0 $cdb3 $cdb4 $cdb5"

The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP HP35450A -A C620" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "Sequential-Access density code 0x13"

This is a DDS-1 tape drive. DDS-1 is the original DAT tape format.

Native capacity is 1.2GB.

Data transfer rate is 160kB/s.

Reported by: mark thompson mark.a.thompson@pobox.com

The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP HP35470A 9 09" type 1 removable SCSI 2"

This is a DDS-1 tape drive. DDS-1 is the original DAT tape format.

Native capacity is 2GB when using 90m tapes.

Data transfer rate is 183kB/s.

The same mechanism is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore tape drive, C35470A DDS format DAT drive, C1534A DDS format DAT drive, and HP C1536A DDS format DAT drive.

Warning: Quality control on these drives varies greatly. One FreeBSD core-team member has returned 5 of these drives. None lasted more than 9 months.

Reported by: David Dawes dawes@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au (9 09)

The boot message identifier for this drive is "HP HP35480A 1009" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "Sequential-Access density code 0x13".

This is a DDS-DC tape drive. DDS-DC is DDS-1 with hardware data compression. DDS-1 is the original DAT tape format.

Native capacity is 2GB when using 90m tapes. It cannot handle 120m tapes. This drive supports hardware data compression. Please refer to the section on for the proper switch settings.

Data transfer rate is 183kB/s.

This drive is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore and tape drives and C35480A DDS format DAT drive..

This drive will occasionally hang during a tape eject operation (mt offline). Pressing the front panel button will eject the tape and bring the tape drive back to life.

WARNING: HP 35480-03110 only. On at least two occasions this tape drive when used with FreeBSD 2.1.0, an IBM Server 320 and an 2940W SCSI controller resulted in all SCSI disk partitions being lost. The problem has not be analyzed or resolved at this time.

There are at least two significantly different models: one is a DDS-1 and the other DDS-2. The DDS-1 version is "SDT-5000 3.02". The DDS-2 version is "SONY SDT-5000 327M". The DDS-2 version has a 1MB cache. This cache is able to keep the tape streaming in almost any circumstances.

The boot message identifier for this drive is "SONY SDT-5000 3.02" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "Sequential-Access density code 0x13"

Native capacity is 4GB when using 120m tapes. This drive supports hardware data compression.

Data transfer rate is depends upon the model or the drive. The rate is 630kB/s for the "SONY SDT-5000 327M" while compressing the data. For the "SONY SDT-5000 3.02", the data transfer rate is 225kB/s.

In order to get this drive to stream, set the blocksize to 512 bytes (mt blocksize 512) reported by Kenneth Merry ken@ulc199.residence.gatech.edu"

"SONY SDT-5000 327M" information reported by Charles Henrich henrich@msu.edu

Reported by: &a.jmz;

The boot message identifier for this drive is "TANDBERG TDC 3600 =08:" "type 1 removable SCSI 2"

This is a QIC tape drive.

Native capacity is 150/250MB.

This drive has quirks which are known and work around code is present in the scsi tape device driver (st(4)). Upgrading the firmware to XXX version will fix the quirks and provide SCSI 2 capabilities.

Data transfer rate is 80kB/s.

IBM and Emerald units will not work. Replacing the firmware EPROM of these units will solve the problem.

Reported by: Michael Smith msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au

This is very similar to the drive.

Reported by: &a.joerg;

The boot message identifier for this drive is "TANDBERG TDC 4222 =07" "type 1 removable SCSI 2"

This is a QIC tape drive.

Native capacity is 2.5GB. The drive will read all cartridges from the 60 MB (DC600A) upwards, and write 150 MB (DC6150) upwards. Hardware compression is optionally supported for the 2.5 GB cartridges.

This drives quirks are known and pre-compiled into the scsi tape device driver (st(4)) beginning with FreeBSD 2.2-current. For previous versions of FreeBSD, use mt to read one block from the tape, rewind the tape, and then execute the backup program (mt fsr 1; mt rewind; dump ...)

Data transfer rate is 600kB/s (vendor claim with compression), 350 KB/s can even be reached in start/stop mode. The rate decreases for smaller cartridges.

Reported by: &a.joerg;

The boot message identifier for this drive is "WANGTEK 5525ES SCSI REV7 3R1" "type 1 removable SCSI 1" "density code 0x11, 1024-byte blocks"

This is a QIC tape drive.

Native capacity is 525MB.

Data transfer rate is 180kB/s.

The drive reads 60, 120, 150, and 525MB tapes. The drive will not write 60MB (DC600 cartridge) tapes. In order to overwrite 120 and 150 tapes reliably, first erase (mt erase) the tape. 120 and 150 tapes used a wider track (fewer tracks per tape) than 525MB tapes. The "extra" width of the previous tracks is not overwritten, as a result the new data lies in a band surrounded on both sides by the previous data unless the tape have been erased.

This drives quirks are known and pre-compiled into the scsi tape device driver (st(4)).

Other firmware revisions that are known to work are: M75D

Reported by: Marc van Kempen marc@bowtie.nl "REV73R1" Andrew Gordon Andrew.Gordon@net-tel.co.uk "M75D"

The boot message identifier for this drive is "WANGTEK 6200-HS 4B18" "type 1 removable SCSI 2" "Sequential-Access density code 0x13"

This is a DDS-1 tape drive.

Native capacity is 2GB using 90m tapes.

Data transfer rate is 150kB/s.

Reported by: Tony Kimball alk@Think.COM * Problem drives CD-ROM drives

Contributed by &a.obrien;.23 November 1997.

As mentioned in Generally speaking those in The FreeBSD Project prefer SCSI CDROM drives over IDE CDROM drives. However not all SCSI CDROM drives are equal. Some feel the quality of some SCSI CDROM drives have been deteriorating to that of IDE CDROM drives. Toshiba used to be the favored stand-by, but many on the SCSI mailing list have found displeasure with the 12x speed XM-5701TA as its volume (when playing audio CDROMs) is not controllable by the various audio player software. Another area where SCSI CDROM manufacturers are cutting corners is adhearance to the . Many SCSI CDROMs will respond to for its target address. Known violators include the 6x Teac CD-56S 1.0D. * Other * Other * PCMCIA