NetBSD/atari

 atari-logo

About NetBSD/atari

NetBSD/atari is the port of NetBSD to the Atari line of personal computers. Development activity on NetBSD/atari continues at a speed dependent on people's spare time. Currently, NetBSD/atari runs on the TT030, Falcon and Hades. Experimental support is available for the Milan.

NetBSD/atari News

2010-04-01:   Support for the EtherNEC
Support for the EtherNEC Ethernet has been committed to NetBSD-current. The EtherNEC is an NE2000 based Ethernet device connected to Atari's ROM cartridge slot, and it's the most available network solution for the old Atari machines.
2010-03-13:   Support for the SMC Elite Ultra ISA Ethernet card with SMC_TT VME-ISA bridge
Support for the SMC Elite Ultra Ethernet with the SMC_TT VME-ISA bridge has been committed to NetBSD-current. The SMC_TT is the user designed “handmade” VME-ISA bridge circuit for 16 bit VME slot on TT030 and the SMC Elite Ultra ISA Ethernet card. TT030 with SMC_TT and this driver have been also demonstrated on the NetBSD booth in Open Source Conference 2010 Kansai@Kobe. See Demonstration GIF animation for TT030.
2009-01-23:   Recent NetBSD/atari changes and fixes

NetBSD/atari has seen several fixes lately, to bring it up and running again. Summary of the recent changes are:

  • ncr5380 SCSI driver works again (no freezing at probing)
  • Ramdisk driver is now fixed (essential for installation)
  • Installer and bootloader issues are now fixed
  • Falcon kernel now supports 68060 CPU (CT60/63)
  • Kernel configuration files are updated
  • Interrupt handler issues are now fixed
  • Amiga pmap changes are now pulled to Atari (required for yamt-km merge)
  • Falcon IDE driver lost interrupt problem is fixed

Archive of NetBSD/atari news items

Supported hardware

A minimal system should have a 68030 CPU, 4MB RAM (of which 2MB can be ST-RAM) and a SCSI or IDE disk. An FPU is not really necessary because the BOOT and BOOTX kernels supplied in the distribution both contain FPU-emulation support. Although the current emulation does not yet cover the full MC68882 instruction set, you will see that you will get a very workable system.

  • ST and TT video modes, including TT-HIGH
  • Falcon video (except Direct Color - 15/16 bit depth)
  • Hades et4000/w32-pci video adapter
  • Hades et6000-pci and et6100-pci video adapter
  • Builtin 5380 SCSI adapter
  • Most SCSI disks, CD-ROM's, tape's and ZIP drives
  • Realtime clock
  • SCC serial ports (serial2/modem2)
  • 720Kb/1.44Mb floppy drive
  • Parallel printer
  • The IDE interface on both Falcon and Hades (Including ATAPI)
  • The serial interface on the first 68901 UART (modem1)
  • 68060 support for the Falcon (CT60/63) and Hades
  • The Falcon FX memory expansion
  • The atari mouse
  • A 3-button mouse (see build description)
  • EtherNEC Ethernet on ROM cartridge slot (-current)

  • Supported VME-bus devices (TT030/Hades)

    • VME BVME410 Ethernet
    • Circad Leonardo 24-bit VME graphics adapter
    • Crazy Dots VME et4000 graphics adapter
    • VME Riebl (and possibly PAM) Ethernet
    • SMC Elite Ultra ISA Ethernet with SMC_TT VME-ISA bridge (-current)

  • Supported Hades PCI-devices

    • Adaptec 2940U SCSI NOT (see the note below)
    • ESS Technology Inc. Solo-1 Soundcard
    • 3Com 3c59x Network card

  • Supported Hades ISA-devices

    • I4BSD support for the teles 16.3 card
    • NE2000 compatible cards

  • Supported Milan PCI-devices

    • Intel EtherExpress PRO 10+/100B

Note

  • The Hades PCI bus is very critical. Many cards are not recognized. This seems to be due to electrical problems.
  • The current Adaptec driver does no longer work, unfortunately.

NetBSD/atari Information

Mailing Lists

Current Releases

Future Releases

Related Links