OpenBSD/hp300

OpenBSD/hp300 runs on most of the HP 9000 series 300 and 400 workstations, based on the Motorola 680x0 processor family.

The OpenBSD/hp300 port will be discontinued after the 5.5 release.

Table of contents

• History of the port
• Current status
• Supported hardware
• Getting and installing OpenBSD/hp300

History:

OpenBSD follows in the footsteps of 4.4BSD by supporting the hp300; most types of machine are supported with 68030 or better processors, along with SCSI and HP-IB storage devices.

OpenBSD/hp300 runs 8k pagesize executables natively (the first operating system for the hp300 to do so), maintaining the standard binary format used by all other OpenBSD m68k platforms.

Over time, the 4.4BSD codebase was extended and corrected, and the hp300 port switched to the regular config(8) for kernel configuration.

Shortly after OpenBSD 2.9 was released, support was added for the 425e model, using a serial console on the first serial port.

Recent development features the replacement of the old hp300-specific SCSI code base with the generic SCSI subsystem (as of 3.6), dynamic attachment and detachment of HP-HIL devices, and support for the SGC bus and frame buffers (as of 3.7), as well as the Apollo Domain keyboard and mouse (as of 3.8).

Current status:

Currently, all the hardware listed in the supported hardware section below boots multi-user, and supports enough of the on-board devices to be generally usable, unless specified otherwise.

A native, unaccelerated X11R6 server is available for all supported frame buffers except the sti frame buffers.

Supported hardware:

Supported machines

• HP 9000/300 series:
  • 68030-based: 340, 345, 360, 362, 370 and 375
  • 68040-based: 380, 382 and 385

• HP 9000/400 series:
  • 68030-based: 400(dl/s/t)
  • 68040-based: 425(dl/e/s/t) and 433(dl/e/s/t)

  These machines are not supported when configured for Domain/OS; the ROM must be in HP-UX mode in order to boot the system. Please refer to the hp300 FAQ page for information on how to change the ROM mode.

SCSI controllers and peripherals

• 98658A built-in and add-on SCSI interface (spc)

• SCSI-1 disk drives (sd). ^(*)
• SCSI-1 cdrom drives (cd). ^(*)
• Autochangers (ch).
• Tape drives: HP DAT, Exabyte, and SCSI QIC drives such as the Archive Viper (st).

^(*) SCSI-2 devices are known to work, but may require changing a jumper to restrict them to SCSI-1 behaviour. Refer to your hardware documentation for details.

HP-IB/CS80 controllers and peripherals

• 98624 built-in interface (nhpib)
• 98625A and 98625B ``fast'' interface (fhpib)

• Most HP disks, including: 7912, 7914, 7933, 7936, 7937, 7945, 7957, 7958, 7959, 2200, and 2203 (hd)
• Low-density cartridge drives: 7914, 7946, and 9144 (ct)
• High-density cartridge drives: 9145 (ct)
• 1/2" tape drives: 7974A, 7978A/B, 7979A, 7980A, and 7980XC (ct)

Serial ports

• 98644 built-in and add-on card single port (dca)
• 98642 4-port mux (dcm)
• 98638 8-port mux (dcm)
• 400-series Apollo 3-port serial/keyboard mux (apci)
  (The first port being typically configured as a dca device, except on 425e).

Ethernet interfaces

• 98643 built-in and add-on LAN cards (le)

Frame buffers

• 98543, 98544, 98545, and 98547 color and monochrome Topcat (topcat)
• 98548, 98549 and 98550 color and monochrome Catseye (topcat)
• A1416A color Kathmandu (topcat)
• 98700 and 98710 Gatorbox (gbox)
• 98720 and 98721 Renaissance (rbox)
• 98730 and 98731 DaVinci (dvbox)
• A1096A monochrome Hyperion (hyper)
• 98705 PersonalVRX TigerShark (tvrx)
• VRX (362/382 on-board), EVRX (425e on-board) and SGC frame buffers (sti)

Input devices

• General interface supporting all HIL devices (hil):
  • Keyboards (hilkbd)
  • mice and button boxes (hilms)
  • ID module (hilid)
  Serial mice connected to a HIL to quad converter are also known to work.
• Apollo Domain keyboard and mouse (on 400-series) (dnkbd)

Miscellaneous

• Digital audio on model 425e (arcofi)
• Battery-backed real-time clock (except on 425e)
• Printers and plotters on RS232 and HP-IB (ppi)

More information about hardware configuration may be found on the hp300 FAQ page.

Unsupported machines

• 68010-based: 310
• 68020-based: 318, 319, 320, 330 and 350 (support for all 68020 models has been dropped after OpenBSD 3.9)
• 68030-based: 332 (this model ought to work if a 68882 FPU is installed, but to the best of our knowledge this has never been tried)

Unsupported devices

• Parallel port.
• 98765 TurboVRX, X-Genesis and Y-Genesis frame buffers.
• ISA slot on the 4xx ``t'' models. (There is minimal support for it, but interrupts are not working)
• EISA slots on the 4xx ``s'' models.

Getting and installing OpenBSD/hp300:

The latest supported OpenBSD/hp300 release is OpenBSD 5.4. Here are the OpenBSD/hp300 5.4 installation instructions .

Snapshots are made available from time to time, in this location as well as in a few mirrors. Here are the OpenBSD/hp300 snapshot installation instructions as well.