OpenBSD/hppa runs on a large set of the 32-bit Hewlett Packard Precision
Architecture workstations and servers (HP PA-RISC). A subset of the 64-bit
models are supported in 32-bit mode, as well.
A mailing list dedicated to the OpenBSD/hppa port is available at
[email protected].
To join the OpenBSD/hppa mailing list, send a message body of "subscribe
hppa" to [email protected].
Please be sure to check our mailing list policy before
subscribing.
The current port maintainer is
Mark Kettenis ([email protected]).
Others are definitely welcome to contribute!
History
This project was started in those days when the only
open source operating systems for HP PA-RISC computers were
Lites and
MkLinux.
These two sources were a major supply of information and
code for initial development of the OpenBSD/hppa port.
HPBSD
is encumbered by HP proprietary code and USL licensing and is
not publicly available.
One of the major direct benefits from previous porting efforts
(besides the code, of course) was support for HP PA-RISC in GCC and
binutils, which allowed quick building of a cross-tools environment
for development.
Later on, Hewlett-Packard decided to sponsor a
Linux port to the PA-RISC
family, which actually resulted in some proprietary documentation
being released, even though their target was a different class of 9000
machines back then.
Current status
Currently, all the supported systems boot multi-user.
In addition to the release, full snapshots are made periodically,
and work is ongoing to provide better hardware support.
Supported hardware
For a system component and device driver listing for this architecture, see
intro(4/hppa).
cpu(4) support for the 7000,
7100, 7100LC, 7150, 7200, 7300LC, 8000, 8200, 8500, 8600, 8700 processors
found on the following systems:
The following systems are unsupported, but may eventually be coaxed to life.
Some of them will boot OpenBSD, but there is not enough device support for
OpenBSD to be really useful on them.
PA7100LC-based: Dx00, Dx10
PA7200-based: Dx50, Dx60
PA8000-based (in 32-bit mode): Dx70, Dx80/R380, Kx50/Kx60
PA8200-based (in 32-bit mode): D390/R390, Kx70/Kx80
HP 9000 E-Class (with limited I/O)
Most Hitachi PA-RISC workstations and servers
The following systems are very unlikely to be supported since they either have
incompatible firmware (the 3000s) or almost completely undocumented I/O
subsystems (the 8x7s).
HP 3000 900
HP 9000 8x7 (F, G, H, I-Class)
Even though some 64-bit systems are supported by this port in 32-bit mode,
the following models cannot be supported due to the I/O system limitations:
Convex PA-RISC systems (NUMA supercomputing clusters
consisting of one or more 8-way SMP nodes with PA7100 or PA7200 CPUs)
are unlikely to be ever supported.
All other HP 9000 6xx, 8xx and 9xx server systems will probably never
be supported by this port since they are of 1.0 PA-RISC architecture,
which is substantially inferior to the 1.1.
Unsupported peripherals
This list is not meant to be exhaustive either, but sums up the most commonly
encountered devices on hppa machines.