NAME
intro
—
introduction to special files and
hardware support
DESCRIPTION
The manual pages in section 4 describe 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(8) 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).
DEVICE SUPPORT
This section describes the hardware supported on the SPARC platform. 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.
LIST OF DEVICES
The devices listed below are supported in this incarnation of the system. Pseudo-devices are not listed. Devices are sorted by their type and driver name; not all supported devices are listed.
Audio interfaces
- audioamd(4)
- SPARC telephone quality audio device
- audiocs(4)
- SPARC CS4231 audio device
Frame buffers
- agten(4)
- Fujitsu AG-10e accelerated 24-bit color frame buffer
- bwtwo(4)
- monochromatic frame buffer
- cgeight(4)
- 24-bit color frame buffer
- cgfour(4)
- 8-bit color frame buffer
- cgfourteen(4)
- accelerated 8/24-bit color frame buffer
- cgsix(4)
- accelerated 8-bit color frame buffer
- cgthree(4)
- 8-bit color frame buffer
- cgtwelve(4)
- accelerated 24-bit color frame buffer
- cgtwo(4)
- 8-bit color frame buffer
- mgx(4)
- SMS MGX and MGXPlus accelerated 8/24-bit color frame buffers
- rfx(4)
- Vitec/Connectware/AP&D RasterFlex framebuffer series
- tcx(4)
- accelerated 8/24-bit color frame buffer
- tvtwo(4)
- accelerated 24-bit color frame buffer
- vigra(4)
- 8-bit SBus color frame buffer with VGA-compatible modes
- zx(4)
- accelerated 24-bit color frame buffer
Network interfaces
- be(4)
- SPARC 10/100 Ethernet device
- ep(4)
- 3Com EtherLink III and Fast EtherLink III 10/100 Ethernet device
- hme(4)
- Sun Happy Meal 10/100 Ethernet device
- ie(4)
- Intel i82586 Ethernet device
- le(4), lebuffer(4), ledma(4)
- AMD LANCE Ethernet device
- ne(4)
- NE2000 and compatible 10/100 Ethernet device
- qe(4)
- SPARC 10/100 Ethernet device
- qec(4)
- SPARC Quad Ethernet Controller
- wi(4)
- WaveLAN/IEEE, PRISM 2-3, and Spectrum24 IEEE 802.11b wireless network device
PCMCIA bridges
- stp(4)
- SBus PCMCIA bridge
SCSI adapters
Serial and parallel interfaces
SMD controllers
Force CPU-5 specific devices
Tadpole SPARCbook specific devices
Miscellaneous devices
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The sparc intro
first appeared in
OpenBSD 2.3.