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Last modified Fri Jan 25 14:42:19 EST 2013
Plan 9 supports almost all motherboard IDE/ATAPI controllers, but DMA transfers are only used on these recognized chipsets (chipsets not listed here will simply run slower; you can try turning on DMA by editing /sys/src/9/pc/sdata.c).
Plan 9 supports a few SATA controllers in their native AHCI mode, as opposed to the IDE-compatibility mode that some of them offer.
The non-AHCI Marvell 88SX series four- and eight-port PCI-X chipsets are also supported.
Plan 9 supports access to ATA-over-Ethernet devices.
USB audio, disks, Ethernet, keyboards, mice and printers are supported (see usb(4)) via the UHCI, OHCI and EHCI interfaces. XHCI (USB 3, 5Gb/s) is not yet started.
Plan 9 will automatically recognize the PCI and PCI-Express Ethernet cards that it can drive. The following chips/cards are supported, in decreasing order of speed:
Plan 9 can attempt to drive video cards using the VESA BIOS extensions instead of using drivers specific to particular chips. To use VESA, choose "vesa" as your monitor type during the CD boot or when making an install floppy.
The following cards are known to work using VESA. (Cards not listed here are still worth trying!)
(Some of the cards in this list have been moved to the main table)
The following cards are known not to work with VESA:
For VGA cards it is more precise to describe the chips we support rather than the cards they are based on, since the cards are more ephemeral. Beware: different revisions of a card may use different chip sets.
Plan 9 can use some basic acceleration features such as filling and scrolling rectangles.
NOTE: If your chipset is not listed or listed as not supported, try the VESA driver by entering "vesa" as your monitor type.
Chip | Native | VESA | Notes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #9 Ticket to Ride IV | Yes | ? | for SGI 1600SW 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee | Yes? | ? | Works perfectly with Elpin Banshee(Rev 1.1) 3Dfx 55-0013-04 3Dfx Voodoo 3 1000 | Yes | ? | 2000 | Yes | ? | 3000 | Yes | ? | AMD Geode GX2 | No | No | ARK 2000pv | Yes(2) | ? | ATI Mach Mach 32 | Yes(2)| ? | | Mach64xx | Yes? | ? | Some newer Mach64 don't work(eg, later ATI Xpert) ATI Rage - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Rage Rage IIc | Yes | ? | Needs hwaccel off Rage 3D II+ | Broken | Yes | Garbled display Rage 128 | No | ? | Too different from the Mach 64 Rage XL | Yes | Yes | ATI Radeon (789)xxx | (1) | Yes | Works well with VESA Mobility M7 LW | No | Yes | Max: 1024x768x24 X1600 Pro | No | No | CHIPS hiQVideo 65550 | Yes | ? | 65554 | Yes | ? | 69000 | Yes | ? | Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x | Yes | ? | CL-GD543x | Yes | No | CL-GD544x | Yes | Yes | Used by qemu CL-GD546x Laguna | Yes | ? | Intel i81x | Yes | ? | Intel i740 | No | ? | Intel i950 | No | Yes | Intel 82845G | No | Yes | Intel GMA3100 | No | Yes | Matrox (Note: GXXX series only support 8bit and 32bit depths) G200 | Yes | ? | G400 | Yes | ? | G450 | Yes | Yes | G550 | Yes | Yes | P650 | No | Yes | Matrox Millennium II | Yes | ? | Neomagic MagicGraph | Yes | ? | MagicMedia | Yes | No | NVIDIA TNT | Yes | ? | TNT2 | Yes | Yes | GeForce | Yes? | ? | GeForce 2 | Yes | ? | GeForce 2 DVI | Yes | ? | GeForce 2 MX/MX 400 | Yes | Yes | GeForce 3 | Yes | ? | GeForce 4 | Yes | ? | GeForce 4 MX | Yes | Yes | GeForce FX 5200 | Yes | Yes | Native: Some people have reported problems with DVI. GeForce 6200 | No | Yes | GeForce 6800 XT | Yes | ? | S3 801, 805, 864, 928 | Yes(2) | ? | S3 968 | Yes | ? | S3 Savage Savage 4 | Yes | ? | Savage IX/MV | Yes | ? | SuperSavage IXC/16 | Yes | ? | SavagePro8/DDR | Yes | ? | Savage 2000 | No | ? | S3 ViRGE DX,GX,GX2,MX,VX |Yes | ? | S3 Trio64V+ | Yes | No | dbvesa: invalid vesa signature S3 Elsa 1000Trio/V | Yes | No | Works fine with 1024x768x8, supports max. 8 bit depth. S3 Trio3D | No | Yes | Tseng ET4000 | Yes(2) | ? | Trident Cyber938x | Yes | ? | VIA UniChrome (EPIA-MS) | No | Yes | VMware virtual chipset (vmware won't release documentation, please use qemu instead) 4.5 | Yes | ? | 5.0 | Yes | ? | Needs hwaccel off
(1) See the radeon drivers page.
(2) Only tested with old editions of Plan 9.
Cards supported in the third edition but not tested in current system:
Cards supported in the first and second editions but not tested in the current system:
Any PS/2 or USB keyboard should work. The bootstraps require PS/2 "emulation" in your BIOS to make USB keyboards work.
Plan 9 supports PS/2, PS/2 Intellimouse, and serial mice. USB mice are supported via a user-space driver. See usb(4), usbd(4), and usb(3).
You will want a 3 button mouse for plan9, using the scroll wheel as the middle button is not really satisfactory. The IBM 40K9201 and HP DY651A are both good quality USB optical mice with three real buttons.
There is preliminary support for the scroll wheel and extra buttons as on the Toshiba Portege 3440CT.
Most laptops present their built-in pointing devices as PS/2 mice.
The middle mouse button on the virtual VMware mouse appears not to work when running Plan 9 under Windows 2000 on certain laptops, notably IBM Thinkpads. To the extent that fault can be assigned, it is a hardware bug. The mouse controllers do not follow the same protocol that all other 3-button mice do for reporting the button count. See http://lists.cse.psu.edu/archives/9fans/2002-May/017472.html for a Windows workaround.
Laptops are often the hardest systems to get Plan 9 running on, because you can't choose the hardware piece by piece.
The following laptops are known to work in the current release:
The following laptops worked in previous releases and may work in the current one:
The following laptops are known not to work with Plan 9:
The following cardbus controllers are supported:
If the cardbus chipset is not supported, Plan 9 falls back to the PCMCIA driver, which handles the Intel i82365, Cirrus Logic CL-PD6710, Cirrus Logic CL-PD6720, Vadem VG-46x, and compatibles. This covers most laptops.
Supported audio devices:
Supported but not as well tested:
USB audio devices that have been reported to work:
Plan 9 supports generic floppy drives, although some people have had trouble accessing them. If you have trouble accessing your 3.5" floppy drive and also have a 5.25" floppy drive, try disabling the latter in the BIOS.
USB floppy drives are not supported.
Virtually any modern SCSI jukebox will work. The key thing to look for (probably on the manufacturer's web site) is that the jukebox must implement the SCSI SMC (SCSI Media Changer) command set. Media (M-O disks) and jukeboxes can be had cheaply on ebay.com. We have had good experience with these models on Plan 9 file servers:
We've had limited experience with these models (bought used), and they failed within a few months, one mechanically and the other electronically:
The 160FX and up seem to be built much more sturdily than the smaller jukeboxes, which are the size of large tower PCs.
THIN CLIENT (terminal/CPU/Auth-server)
