Supported PC Hardware -Diff-
This page lists hardware known to work with Plan 9. Most hardware is listed by chipset, you may need to know what chipset your particular cards use. There is also a list of known broken hardware.
IDE/ATAPI CONTROLLERS
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).
- ALi M1543, M5288 SATA
- AMD 755, 756, 766, 768, 3111, CS5536
- AMD/ATI SB400, 200M, 4379 SATA
- CMD 640B, 646
- HighPoint HPT366
- Intel PIIX, PIIX3, PIIX4, ICH, ICH0, ICH2-7, ICH9, 6300ESB
- NS PC87415
- nVidia nForce 1-4, MCP 55, 61, 65, 69, 430
- PC-Tech RZ1000
- Promise PDC202xx, Ultra/133 TX2, 20378
- ServerWorks IB6566
- SiL 3112 SATA, 3114 SATA/RAID
- SiS 962
- VIA 82C686, VT8237 SATA/RAID
SATA CONTROLLERS
Plan 9 supports a few SATA controllers in their native AHCI mode, as opposed to the IDE-compatibility mode that some of them offer.
- AMD SB600
- Intel 63xxESB
- Intel 82801GxM, for x = B or H
- Intel ICH8, ICH9
The non-AHCI Marvell 88SX series four- and eight-port PCI-X chipsets are also supported.
ATA-OVER-ETHERNET DEVICES
Plan 9 supports access to ATA-over-Ethernet devices.
USB
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.
ETHERNET
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:
- Intel 8259x 10Gb
- Myricom 10Gb
- Alteon, DEC, or SGI Acenic fiber Gigabit
- Intel 8254x PRO/1000 Gigabit
- Intel 8256x, 8257x Gigabit PCI-Express
- National Semiconductor DP83820 Gigabit
- Netgear GA620 Gigabit (discouraged due to large firmware blob)
- Realtek 8110S/8169S Gigabit
- Via Velocity Gigabit
- 3Com 3C562, 3C589, and 3C589E PCMCIA
- 3Com 3C450, 3C575, 3C59x, 3C90x, 3CSOHO100-TX
- Accton EtherPair-PCMCIA EN2216
- AMD 79C970
- D-Link DFE-538TX, DFE-560TXD
- Dell TrueMobile 1150 wireless
- Digital (now Intel) 2114x and clones. (Tulip, PIC, PIC-II, Centaur, Digital DE-500)
- EtherFast 10/100 PC Card
- Intel 82562EM/EZ/ET/VE, 8255x PRO/100
- Intel 82801DB PRO/100 VE
- Intersil Prism2.5 wireless
- Linksys EC2T Combo PCMCIA EtherCard, NB10T
- Linksys WPC-11 wireless
- Lucent/Agere/Avaya/Orinoco Wavelan wireless
- NE2000 clones
- National Semiconductor DP83815, DP8390
- Netgear FA310, FA311, FA312, FA410TX, FA411 PCMCIA
- Realtek 8029, 8139 - DL10038(D) (Remark of Realtek 8139)
- SMC 1211, 8040TX PCMCIA, 91CXX PCMCIA
- VIA Rhine VT6102 (pxe-bootable)
- VIA Rhine II VT6103 (pxe-bootable)
- Western Digital/SMC WD8003, WD8013, WD8216
- Winbond 89C940
VESA VIDEO CARDS
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!)
- Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (Dell desktops)
- Intel 82845G Integrated Graphics Controller (Compaq Evo D510 SFF)
- Intel 855GM Integrated Graphics Device (Thinkpad X40)
- Radeon 9200 Mobile (Compaq NX7010)
- Radeon Mobility 9600 (ThinkPad T42p)
- Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 LW (Compaq Presario 1500)
- Radeon R200 QH (Fire GL 8700 and 8800)
- Radeon RV280 (9200 SL)
- Nvidia Quadro4 980 XGL
- SiS630 onboard
- SiS630 ST onboard (JVC MP-XP3)
- VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700 VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP
(Some of the cards in this list have been moved to the main table)
The following cards are known not to work with VESA:
- Neomagic NM2360/MagicMedia 256ZX (Thinkpad 600X): Blank screen.
- Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436/46 (no VESA support?)
- AMD Geode GX2. Blank screen. Bug identified by Russ Cox, but hard to solve.
VGA CARDS AND CHIPSETS
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:
- ATI Graphics Xpression
- ATI Xpert 98
- ATI xpert@work
- ATI Xpert LCD
- #9FX Reality 334
- Diamond Stealth3D 2000 vers 1.04
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001
- Diamond SpeedStar 64
Cards supported in the first and second editions but not tested in the current system:
- #9FX Reality 332
- #9GXE Level-11, Level-12, Level-16
- #9GXE 64
- #9GXE 64pro
- Diamond SpeedStar Pro
- Hercules Terminator
- NCR 3230
- Orchid Fahrenheit 1280
- Orchid Kelvin 64
- Quadtel S3 86C801, 86C805
- STB PowerGraph X-24
- STB Velocity 3D
- STB Velocity 64 Video
- Stealth 64 Video 3000
- Stingray 64/Video
- Various Rackmount SBCs
SCSI CONTROLLERS
- LSI Logic 53C8xx and 53C1010 chipsets, e.g., cards from: Tekram, LSI Logic, Symbios, Compaq, NCR, I-O DATA, ASUS. The chip numbers matter more than the brand. LSI Logic now owns Symbios and Mylex. You may need to configure the SCSI BIOS to "START UNIT" (spin up) the bootable drive so I/O works for the main BIOS. Also, beware 53C1020/1030 cards--they are "Fusion/MPT" and cannot be supported by this driver.
- Buslogic BT-948 or BT-958 (AKA Mylex multimaster series). These aren't being made any more, but you might be able to buy them used.
- Adaptec 1540 or 1542 for the ISA bus
- Ultrastor 14F ISA or 34F VLB
KEYBOARDS
Any PS/2 or USB keyboard should work. The bootstraps require PS/2 "emulation" in your BIOS to make USB keyboards work.
MICE
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
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:
- Acer TravelMate 4052 WmLi (no wireless, no sound)
- Acer Aspire 5024WLMi (wireless and sound not tested, *nousbohci=1 required; tested with 9atom)
- Asus F7400
- Compaq Presario 1500 (ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW, Intel PRO 100/VE i82562, usb mouse works)
- Dell Inspiron 2650 (mouse not working though)
- Dell Inspiron 70n 7000
- Dell Inspiron 1000 (no ether, no sound, cardbus not tested)
- IBM Thinkpad 560, 560E, 600E, T20, T21, T23, T30 (using Philippe Anel's Radeon Drivers), T42p (no wireless), X20, X40, X60
- NEC Versa LX, SX
- Sharp Actius A250
- Sony Vaio PGC-105k (uk)
- Sony Vaio PCG-GR114EK
- Toshiba Portege 3440CT
- Toshiba Tecra 750CDM
- HP Compaq nx6315 (No net)
- JVC MP-XP3
The following laptops worked in previous releases and may work in the current one:
- AT&T GIS Globalyst 250
- Compaq Armada 7710 MT
- Dell Dimension cpi 333
- IBM Thinkpad 560X, 570
- NEC Versa 6030X, 6200MX
- Sony VAIO PCG 747
- Toshiba Satellite 2800
The following laptops are known not to work with Plan 9:
- Compaq Armada 7800 (does not detect all physical memory, runs out, apparently hardware cursor doesn't work either)
- Compaq LTE 5300 (unsupported video card Cirrus Logic GD7543)<- Are You sure about this? I think CL-GD7543 is well supported (Generic 640x480 LCD), I had a COMPAQ Armada 1120T, but the problem was the memory (24MB) not the graphical chip set! see google groups
- Dell Inspiron 4000, 5000e (unsupported video card ATI Mobility M3)
- Zenith Znote 425 (not enough RAM)
CARDBUS AND PCMCIA CONTROLLERS
The following cardbus controllers are supported:
- Ricoh 476 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- Ricoh 478 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- TI PCI-1131 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1250 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1450 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-AC51 Cardbus controller
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.
AUDIO
Supported audio devices:
- Sound Blaster 16 or later, ISA card
- ESS 1688 running in 8-bit SBPro mode
- most USB audio devices
- Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (with code addition from http://kamalatta.ddnss.de/config/ac97k.tar
Supported but not as well tested:
- Any Sound Blaster 16 clones (NOT Sound Blaster Pro clones)
USB audio devices that have been reported to work:
- Edirol UA-1X (recording untested, but believed to work)
- Edirol UA-3
- Philips USB speakers, model DSS 370/17
- Xitel AN1
- Xitel Pro HiFi-Link (setting and reading back the volume works, but does not seem to affect the playback.)
- Xitel MD-Port DG2
- Onkyo SE-U55X
- Onkyo SE-U55GX
- Auditek USB speakers using C-Media CM102 chip (supports 48000Hz playback only)
- Creative Sound Blaster MP3+
- Creative Sound Blaster live! ( Can't set record speed )
- M-Audio FastTrack USB (recording untested; gets "Can't set record speed" message on startup; setting and volume succesds but has no effect.)
FLOPPY DISKS
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.
MAGNETO-OPTICAL DISK JUKEBOXES
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:
- HP 330FX (choline)
- HP 160FX (original emelie)
- HP 1200EX (emelie)
We've had limited experience with these models (bought used), and they failed within a few months, one mechanically and the other electronically:
- HP 40FX
- HP 80EX
The 160FX and up seem to be built much more sturdily than the smaller jukeboxes, which are the size of large tower PCs.
MOTHERBOARDS
- ASUS A8R32-MVP (onboard NIC not supported, use a PCI NIC instead)
THIN CLIENTS
(e.g. Terminal/CPU/Auth-Server)
- IGEL LX 3210 (Via C3 Esther 400Mhz, 256MB RAM, ether, graphics(VGA+DVI), usb, PS/2,) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- IGEL LX 4210 (Via C3 Esther 800Mhz, 128MB RAM, ether, graphics(VGA), usb, PS/2,) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- HP Compaq T5000 (Via C3 Samuel 400Mhz - BIOS says Via Eden - , 128MB RAM, network vt6102, graphics(VGA), usb, PS/2) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- HP T5720 (AMD Geode NX1500 1 Ghz, 256MB RAM, ether, usb, PS/2, SiS 7012 SiS 7012 Audio Device / Realtek AC'97 Audio works)
This page lists hardware known to work with Plan 9. Most hardware is listed by chipset, you may need to know what chipset your particular cards use. There is also a list of known broken hardware.
IDE/ATAPI CONTROLLERS
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).
- ALi M1543, M5288 SATA
- AMD 755, 756, 766, 768, 3111, CS5536
- AMD/ATI SB400, 200M, 4379 SATA
- CMD 640B, 646
- HighPoint HPT366
- Intel PIIX, PIIX3, PIIX4, ICH, ICH0, ICH2-7, ICH9, 6300ESB
- NS PC87415
- nVidia nForce 1-4, MCP 55, 61, 65, 69, 430
- PC-Tech RZ1000
- Promise PDC202xx, Ultra/133 TX2, 20378
- ServerWorks IB6566
- SiL 3112 SATA, 3114 SATA/RAID
- SiS 962
- VIA 82C686, VT8237 SATA/RAID
SATA CONTROLLERS
Plan 9 supports a few SATA controllers in their native AHCI mode, as opposed to the IDE-compatibility mode that some of them offer.
- AMD SB600
- Intel 63xxESB
- Intel 82801GxM, for x = B or H
- Intel ICH8, ICH9
The non-AHCI Marvell 88SX series four- and eight-port PCI-X chipsets are also supported.
ATA-OVER-ETHERNET DEVICES
Plan 9 supports access to ATA-over-Ethernet devices.
USB
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.
ETHERNET
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:
- Intel 8259x 10Gb
- Myricom 10Gb
- Alteon, DEC, or SGI Acenic fiber Gigabit
- Intel 8254x PRO/1000 Gigabit
- Intel 8256x, 8257x Gigabit PCI-Express
- National Semiconductor DP83820 Gigabit
- Netgear GA620 Gigabit (discouraged due to large firmware blob)
- Realtek 8110S/8169S Gigabit
- Via Velocity Gigabit
- 3Com 3C562, 3C589, and 3C589E PCMCIA
- 3Com 3C450, 3C575, 3C59x, 3C90x, 3CSOHO100-TX
- Accton EtherPair-PCMCIA EN2216
- AMD 79C970
- D-Link DFE-538TX, DFE-560TXD
- Dell TrueMobile 1150 wireless
- Digital (now Intel) 2114x and clones. (Tulip, PIC, PIC-II, Centaur, Digital DE-500)
- EtherFast 10/100 PC Card
- Intel 82562EM/EZ/ET/VE, 8255x PRO/100
- Intel 82801DB PRO/100 VE
- Intersil Prism2.5 wireless
- Linksys EC2T Combo PCMCIA EtherCard, NB10T
- Linksys WPC-11 wireless
- Lucent/Agere/Avaya/Orinoco Wavelan wireless
- NE2000 clones
- National Semiconductor DP83815, DP8390
- Netgear FA310, FA311, FA312, FA410TX, FA411 PCMCIA
- Realtek 8029, 8139 - DL10038(D) (Remark of Realtek 8139)
- SMC 1211, 8040TX PCMCIA, 91CXX PCMCIA
- VIA Rhine VT6102 (pxe-bootable)
- VIA Rhine II VT6103 (pxe-bootable)
- Western Digital/SMC WD8003, WD8013, WD8216
- Winbond 89C940
VESA VIDEO CARDS
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!)
- Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (Dell desktops)
- Intel 82845G Integrated Graphics Controller (Compaq Evo D510 SFF)
- Intel 855GM Integrated Graphics Device (Thinkpad X40)
- Radeon 9200 Mobile (Compaq NX7010)
- Radeon Mobility 9600 (ThinkPad T42p)
- Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 LW (Compaq Presario 1500)
- Radeon R200 QH (Fire GL 8700 and 8800)
- Radeon RV280 (9200 SL)
- Nvidia Quadro4 980 XGL
- SiS630 onboard
- SiS630 ST onboard (JVC MP-XP3)
- VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700 VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP
(Some of the cards in this list have been moved to the main table)
The following cards are known not to work with VESA:
- Neomagic NM2360/MagicMedia 256ZX (Thinkpad 600X): Blank screen.
- Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436/46 (no VESA support?)
- AMD Geode GX2. Blank screen. Bug identified by Russ Cox, but hard to solve.
VGA CARDS AND CHIPSETS
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:
- ATI Graphics Xpression
- ATI Xpert 98
- ATI xpert@work
- ATI Xpert LCD
- #9FX Reality 334
- Diamond Stealth3D 2000 vers 1.04
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001
- Diamond SpeedStar 64
Cards supported in the first and second editions but not tested in the current system:
- #9FX Reality 332
- #9GXE Level-11, Level-12, Level-16
- #9GXE 64
- #9GXE 64pro
- Diamond SpeedStar Pro
- Hercules Terminator
- NCR 3230
- Orchid Fahrenheit 1280
- Orchid Kelvin 64
- Quadtel S3 86C801, 86C805
- STB PowerGraph X-24
- STB Velocity 3D
- STB Velocity 64 Video
- Stealth 64 Video 3000
- Stingray 64/Video
- Various Rackmount SBCs
SCSI CONTROLLERS
- LSI Logic 53C8xx and 53C1010 chipsets, e.g., cards from: Tekram, LSI Logic, Symbios, Compaq, NCR, I-O DATA, ASUS. The chip numbers matter more than the brand. LSI Logic now owns Symbios and Mylex. You may need to configure the SCSI BIOS to "START UNIT" (spin up) the bootable drive so I/O works for the main BIOS. Also, beware 53C1020/1030 cards--they are "Fusion/MPT" and cannot be supported by this driver.
- Buslogic BT-948 or BT-958 (AKA Mylex multimaster series). These aren't being made any more, but you might be able to buy them used.
- Adaptec 1540 or 1542 for the ISA bus
- Ultrastor 14F ISA or 34F VLB
KEYBOARDS
Any PS/2 or USB keyboard should work. The bootstraps require PS/2 "emulation" in your BIOS to make USB keyboards work.
MICE
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
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:
- Acer TravelMate 4052 WmLi (no wireless, no sound)
- Acer Aspire 5024WLMi (wireless and sound not tested, *nousbohci=1 required; tested with 9atom)
- Asus F7400
- Compaq Presario 1500 (ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW, Intel PRO 100/VE i82562, usb mouse works)
- Dell Inspiron 2650 (mouse not working though)
- Dell Inspiron 70n 7000
- Dell Inspiron 1000 (no ether, no sound, cardbus not tested)
- IBM Thinkpad 560, 560E, 600E, T20, T21, T23, T30 (using Philippe Anel's Radeon Drivers), T42p (no wireless), X20, X40, X60
- NEC Versa LX, SX
- Sharp Actius A250
- Sony Vaio PGC-105k (uk)
- Sony Vaio PCG-GR114EK
- Toshiba Portege 3440CT
- Toshiba Tecra 750CDM
- HP Compaq nx6315 (No net)
- JVC MP-XP3
The following laptops worked in previous releases and may work in the current one:
- AT&T GIS Globalyst 250
- Compaq Armada 7710 MT
- Dell Dimension cpi 333
- IBM Thinkpad 560X, 570
- NEC Versa 6030X, 6200MX
- Sony VAIO PCG 747
- Toshiba Satellite 2800
The following laptops are known not to work with Plan 9:
- Compaq Armada 7800 (does not detect all physical memory, runs out, apparently hardware cursor doesn't work either)
- Compaq LTE 5300 (unsupported video card Cirrus Logic GD7543)<- Are You sure about this? I think CL-GD7543 is well supported (Generic 640x480 LCD), I had a COMPAQ Armada 1120T, but the problem was the memory (24MB) not the graphical chip set! see google groups
- Dell Inspiron 4000, 5000e (unsupported video card ATI Mobility M3)
- Zenith Znote 425 (not enough RAM)
CARDBUS AND PCMCIA CONTROLLERS
The following cardbus controllers are supported:
- Ricoh 476 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- Ricoh 478 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- TI PCI-1131 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1250 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1450 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-AC51 Cardbus controller
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.
AUDIO
Supported audio devices:
- Sound Blaster 16 or later, ISA card
- ESS 1688 running in 8-bit SBPro mode
- most USB audio devices
- Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (with code addition from http://kamalatta.ddnss.de/config/ac97k.tar
Supported but not as well tested:
- Any Sound Blaster 16 clones (NOT Sound Blaster Pro clones)
USB audio devices that have been reported to work:
- Edirol UA-1X (recording untested, but believed to work)
- Edirol UA-3
- Philips USB speakers, model DSS 370/17
- Xitel AN1
- Xitel Pro HiFi-Link (setting and reading back the volume works, but does not seem to affect the playback.)
- Xitel MD-Port DG2
- Onkyo SE-U55X
- Onkyo SE-U55GX
- Auditek USB speakers using C-Media CM102 chip (supports 48000Hz playback only)
- Creative Sound Blaster MP3+
- Creative Sound Blaster live! ( Can't set record speed )
- M-Audio FastTrack USB (recording untested; gets "Can't set record speed" message on startup; setting and volume succesds but has no effect.)
FLOPPY DISKS
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.
MAGNETO-OPTICAL DISK JUKEBOXES
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:
- HP 330FX (choline)
- HP 160FX (original emelie)
- HP 1200EX (emelie)
We've had limited experience with these models (bought used), and they failed within a few months, one mechanically and the other electronically:
- HP 40FX
- HP 80EX
The 160FX and up seem to be built much more sturdily than the smaller jukeboxes, which are the size of large tower PCs.
MOTHERBOARDS
- ASUS A8R32-MVP (onboard NIC not supported, use a PCI NIC instead)
THIN CLIENTS
(terminal/CPU/Auth-server)
- IGEL LX 3210 (Via C3 Esther 400Mhz, 256MB RAM, ether, graphics(VGA+DVI), usb, PS/2,) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- IGEL LX 4210 (Via C3 Esther 800Mhz, 128MB RAM, ether, graphics(VGA), usb, PS/2,) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- HP Compaq T5000 (Via C3 Samuel 400Mhz - BIOS says Via Eden - , 128MB RAM, network vt6102, graphics(VGA), usb, PS/2) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- HP T5720 (AMD Geode NX1500 1 Ghz, 256MB RAM, ether, usb,
This page lists hardware known to work with Plan 9. Most hardware is listed by chipset, you may need to know what chipset your particular cards use. There is also a list of known broken hardware.
IDE/ATAPI CONTROLLERS
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).
- ALi M1543, M5288 SATA
- AMD 755, 756, 766, 768, 3111, CS5536
- AMD/ATI SB400, 200M, 4379 SATA
- CMD 640B, 646
- HighPoint HPT366
- Intel PIIX, PIIX3, PIIX4, ICH, ICH0, ICH2-7, ICH9, 6300ESB
- NS PC87415
- nVidia nForce 1-4, MCP 55, 61, 65, 69, 430
- PC-Tech RZ1000
- Promise PDC202xx, Ultra/133 TX2, 20378
- ServerWorks IB6566
- SiL 3112 SATA, 3114 SATA/RAID
- SiS 962
- VIA 82C686, VT8237 SATA/RAID
SATA CONTROLLERS
Plan 9 supports a few SATA controllers in their native AHCI mode, as opposed to the IDE-compatibility mode that some of them offer.
- AMD SB600
- Intel 63xxESB
- Intel 82801GxM, for x = B or H
- Intel ICH8, ICH9
The non-AHCI Marvell 88SX series four- and eight-port PCI-X chipsets are also supported.
ATA-OVER-ETHERNET DEVICES
Plan 9 supports access to ATA-over-Ethernet devices.
USB
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.
ETHERNET
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:
- Intel 8259x 10Gb
- Myricom 10Gb
- Alteon, DEC, or SGI Acenic fiber Gigabit
- Intel 8254x PRO/1000 Gigabit
- Intel 8256x, 8257x Gigabit PCI-Express
- National Semiconductor DP83820 Gigabit
- Netgear GA620 Gigabit (discouraged due to large firmware blob)
- Realtek 8110S/8169S Gigabit
- Via Velocity Gigabit
- 3Com 3C562, 3C589, and 3C589E PCMCIA
- 3Com 3C450, 3C575, 3C59x, 3C90x, 3CSOHO100-TX
- Accton EtherPair-PCMCIA EN2216
- AMD 79C970
- D-Link DFE-538TX, DFE-560TXD
- Dell TrueMobile 1150 wireless
- Digital (now Intel) 2114x and clones. (Tulip, PIC, PIC-II, Centaur, Digital DE-500)
- EtherFast 10/100 PC Card
- Intel 82562EM/EZ/ET/VE, 8255x PRO/100
- Intel 82801DB PRO/100 VE
- Intersil Prism2.5 wireless
- Linksys EC2T Combo PCMCIA EtherCard, NB10T
- Linksys WPC-11 wireless
- Lucent/Agere/Avaya/Orinoco Wavelan wireless
- NE2000 clones
- National Semiconductor DP83815, DP8390
- Netgear FA310, FA311, FA312, FA410TX, FA411 PCMCIA
- Realtek 8029, 8139 - DL10038(D) (Remark of Realtek 8139)
- SMC 1211, 8040TX PCMCIA, 91CXX PCMCIA
- VIA Rhine VT6102 (pxe-bootable)
- VIA Rhine II VT6103 (pxe-bootable)
- Western Digital/SMC WD8003, WD8013, WD8216
- Winbond 89C940
VESA VIDEO CARDS
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!)
- Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (Dell desktops)
- Intel 82845G Integrated Graphics Controller (Compaq Evo D510 SFF)
- Intel 855GM Integrated Graphics Device (Thinkpad X40)
- Radeon 9200 Mobile (Compaq NX7010)
- Radeon Mobility 9600 (ThinkPad T42p)
- Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 LW (Compaq Presario 1500)
- Radeon R200 QH (Fire GL 8700 and 8800)
- Radeon RV280 (9200 SL)
- Nvidia Quadro4 980 XGL
- SiS630 onboard
- SiS630 ST onboard (JVC MP-XP3)
- VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700 VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP
(Some of the cards in this list have been moved to the main table)
The following cards are known not to work with VESA:
- Neomagic NM2360/MagicMedia 256ZX (Thinkpad 600X): Blank screen.
- Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436/46 (no VESA support?)
- AMD Geode GX2. Blank screen. Bug identified by Russ Cox, but hard to solve.
VGA CARDS AND CHIPSETS
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:
- ATI Graphics Xpression
- ATI Xpert 98
- ATI xpert@work
- ATI Xpert LCD
- #9FX Reality 334
- Diamond Stealth3D 2000 vers 1.04
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001
- Diamond SpeedStar 64
Cards supported in the first and second editions but not tested in the current system:
- #9FX Reality 332
- #9GXE Level-11, Level-12, Level-16
- #9GXE 64
- #9GXE 64pro
- Diamond SpeedStar Pro
- Hercules Terminator
- NCR 3230
- Orchid Fahrenheit 1280
- Orchid Kelvin 64
- Quadtel S3 86C801, 86C805
- STB PowerGraph X-24
- STB Velocity 3D
- STB Velocity 64 Video
- Stealth 64 Video 3000
- Stingray 64/Video
- Various Rackmount SBCs
SCSI CONTROLLERS
- LSI Logic 53C8xx and 53C1010 chipsets, e.g., cards from: Tekram, LSI Logic, Symbios, Compaq, NCR, I-O DATA, ASUS. The chip numbers matter more than the brand. LSI Logic now owns Symbios and Mylex. You may need to configure the SCSI BIOS to "START UNIT" (spin up) the bootable drive so I/O works for the main BIOS. Also, beware 53C1020/1030 cards--they are "Fusion/MPT" and cannot be supported by this driver.
- Buslogic BT-948 or BT-958 (AKA Mylex multimaster series). These aren't being made any more, but you might be able to buy them used.
- Adaptec 1540 or 1542 for the ISA bus
- Ultrastor 14F ISA or 34F VLB
KEYBOARDS
Any PS/2 or USB keyboard should work. The bootstraps require PS/2 "emulation" in your BIOS to make USB keyboards work.
MICE
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
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:
- Acer TravelMate 4052 WmLi (no wireless, no sound)
- Acer Aspire 5024WLMi (wireless and sound not tested, *nousbohci=1 required; tested with 9atom)
- Asus F7400
- Compaq Presario 1500 (ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW, Intel PRO 100/VE i82562, usb mouse works)
- Dell Inspiron 2650 (mouse not working though)
- Dell Inspiron 70n 7000
- Dell Inspiron 1000 (no ether, no sound, cardbus not tested)
- IBM Thinkpad 560, 560E, 600E, T20, T21, T23, T30 (using Philippe Anel's Radeon Drivers), T42p (no wireless), X20, X40, X60
- NEC Versa LX, SX
- Sharp Actius A250
- Sony Vaio PGC-105k (uk)
- Sony Vaio PCG-GR114EK
- Toshiba Portege 3440CT
- Toshiba Tecra 750CDM
- HP Compaq nx6315 (No net)
- JVC MP-XP3
The following laptops worked in previous releases and may work in the current one:
- AT&T GIS Globalyst 250
- Compaq Armada 7710 MT
- Dell Dimension cpi 333
- IBM Thinkpad 560X, 570
- NEC Versa 6030X, 6200MX
- Sony VAIO PCG 747
- Toshiba Satellite 2800
The following laptops are known not to work with Plan 9:
- Compaq Armada 7800 (does not detect all physical memory, runs out, apparently hardware cursor doesn't work either)
- Compaq LTE 5300 (unsupported video card Cirrus Logic GD7543)<- Are You sure about this? I think CL-GD7543 is well supported (Generic 640x480 LCD), I had a COMPAQ Armada 1120T, but the problem was the memory (24MB) not the graphical chip set! see google groups
- Dell Inspiron 4000, 5000e (unsupported video card ATI Mobility M3)
- Zenith Znote 425 (not enough RAM)
CARDBUS AND PCMCIA CONTROLLERS
The following cardbus controllers are supported:
- Ricoh 476 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- Ricoh 478 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- TI PCI-1131 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1250 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1450 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-AC51 Cardbus controller
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.
AUDIO
Supported audio devices:
- Sound Blaster 16 or later, ISA card
- ESS 1688 running in 8-bit SBPro mode
- most USB audio devices
- Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (with code addition from http://kamalatta.ddnss.de/config/ac97k.tar
Supported but not as well tested:
- Any Sound Blaster 16 clones (NOT Sound Blaster Pro clones)
USB audio devices that have been reported to work:
- Edirol UA-1X (recording untested, but believed to work)
- Edirol UA-3
- Philips USB speakers, model DSS 370/17
- Xitel AN1
- Xitel Pro HiFi-Link (setting and reading back the volume works, but does not seem to affect the playback.)
- Xitel MD-Port DG2
- Onkyo SE-U55X
- Onkyo SE-U55GX
- Auditek USB speakers using C-Media CM102 chip (supports 48000Hz playback only)
- Creative Sound Blaster MP3+
- Creative Sound Blaster live! ( Can't set record speed )
- M-Audio FastTrack USB (recording untested; gets "Can't set record speed" message on startup; setting and volume succesds but has no effect.)
FLOPPY DISKS
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.
MAGNETO-OPTICAL DISK JUKEBOXES
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:
- HP 330FX (choline)
- HP 160FX (original emelie)
- HP 1200EX (emelie)
We've had limited experience with these models (bought used), and they failed within a few months, one mechanically and the other electronically:
- HP 40FX
- HP 80EX
The 160FX and up seem to be built much more sturdily than the smaller jukeboxes, which are the size of large tower PCs.
MOTHERBOARDS
- ASUS A8R32-MVP (onboard NIC not supported, use a PCI NIC instead)
THIN CLIENTS
(terminal/CPU/Auth-server)
- IGEL LX 3210 (Via C3 Esther 400Mhz, 256MB RAM,
- IGEL LX 4210 (Via C3 Esther 800Mhz, 128MB RAM,
- HP Compaq T5000 (Via C3 Samuel 400Mhz - BIOS says Via Eden - , 128MB RAM, network vt6102, graphics(VGA), usb, PS/2) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- HP T5720 (AMD Geode NX1500 1 Ghz, 256MB RAM, ether, usb, PS/2 SiS 7012 SiS 7012 Audio Device / Realtek AC'97 Audio works)
This page lists hardware known to work with Plan 9. Most hardware is listed by chipset, you may need to know what chipset your particular cards use. There is also a list of known broken hardware.
IDE/ATAPI CONTROLLERS
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).
- ALi M1543, M5288 SATA
- AMD 755, 756, 766, 768, 3111, CS5536
- AMD/ATI SB400, 200M, 4379 SATA
- CMD 640B, 646
- HighPoint HPT366
- Intel PIIX, PIIX3, PIIX4, ICH, ICH0, ICH2-7, ICH9, 6300ESB
- NS PC87415
- nVidia nForce 1-4, MCP 55, 61, 65, 69, 430
- PC-Tech RZ1000
- Promise PDC202xx, Ultra/133 TX2, 20378
- ServerWorks IB6566
- SiL 3112 SATA, 3114 SATA/RAID
- SiS 962
- VIA 82C686, VT8237 SATA/RAID
SATA CONTROLLERS
Plan 9 supports a few SATA controllers in their native AHCI mode, as opposed to the IDE-compatibility mode that some of them offer.
- AMD SB600
- Intel 63xxESB
- Intel 82801GxM, for x = B or H
- Intel ICH8, ICH9
The non-AHCI Marvell 88SX series four- and eight-port PCI-X chipsets are also supported.
ATA-OVER-ETHERNET DEVICES
Plan 9 supports access to ATA-over-Ethernet devices.
USB
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.
ETHERNET
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:
- Intel 8259x 10Gb
- Myricom 10Gb
- Alteon, DEC, or SGI Acenic fiber Gigabit
- Intel 8254x PRO/1000 Gigabit
- Intel 8256x, 8257x Gigabit PCI-Express
- National Semiconductor DP83820 Gigabit
- Netgear GA620 Gigabit (discouraged due to large firmware blob)
- Realtek 8110S/8169S Gigabit
- Via Velocity Gigabit
- 3Com 3C562, 3C589, and 3C589E PCMCIA
- 3Com 3C450, 3C575, 3C59x, 3C90x, 3CSOHO100-TX
- Accton EtherPair-PCMCIA EN2216
- AMD 79C970
- D-Link DFE-538TX, DFE-560TXD
- Dell TrueMobile 1150 wireless
- Digital (now Intel) 2114x and clones. (Tulip, PIC, PIC-II, Centaur, Digital DE-500)
- EtherFast 10/100 PC Card
- Intel 82562EM/EZ/ET/VE, 8255x PRO/100
- Intel 82801DB PRO/100 VE
- Intersil Prism2.5 wireless
- Linksys EC2T Combo PCMCIA EtherCard, NB10T
- Linksys WPC-11 wireless
- Lucent/Agere/Avaya/Orinoco Wavelan wireless
- NE2000 clones
- National Semiconductor DP83815, DP8390
- Netgear FA310, FA311, FA312, FA410TX, FA411 PCMCIA
- Realtek 8029, 8139 - DL10038(D) (Remark of Realtek 8139)
- SMC 1211, 8040TX PCMCIA, 91CXX PCMCIA
- VIA Rhine VT6102 (pxe-bootable)
- VIA Rhine II VT6103 (pxe-bootable)
- Western Digital/SMC WD8003, WD8013, WD8216
- Winbond 89C940
VESA VIDEO CARDS
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!)
- Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (Dell desktops)
- Intel 82845G Integrated Graphics Controller (Compaq Evo D510 SFF)
- Intel 855GM Integrated Graphics Device (Thinkpad X40)
- Radeon 9200 Mobile (Compaq NX7010)
- Radeon Mobility 9600 (ThinkPad T42p)
- Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 LW (Compaq Presario 1500)
- Radeon R200 QH (Fire GL 8700 and 8800)
- Radeon RV280 (9200 SL)
- Nvidia Quadro4 980 XGL
- SiS630 onboard
- SiS630 ST onboard (JVC MP-XP3)
- VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700 VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP
(Some of the cards in this list have been moved to the main table)
The following cards are known not to work with VESA:
- Neomagic NM2360/MagicMedia 256ZX (Thinkpad 600X): Blank screen.
- Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436/46 (no VESA support?)
- AMD Geode GX2. Blank screen. Bug identified by Russ Cox, but hard to solve.
VGA CARDS AND CHIPSETS
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:
- ATI Graphics Xpression
- ATI Xpert 98
- ATI xpert@work
- ATI Xpert LCD
- #9FX Reality 334
- Diamond Stealth3D 2000 vers 1.04
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001
- Diamond SpeedStar 64
Cards supported in the first and second editions but not tested in the current system:
- #9FX Reality 332
- #9GXE Level-11, Level-12, Level-16
- #9GXE 64
- #9GXE 64pro
- Diamond SpeedStar Pro
- Hercules Terminator
- NCR 3230
- Orchid Fahrenheit 1280
- Orchid Kelvin 64
- Quadtel S3 86C801, 86C805
- STB PowerGraph X-24
- STB Velocity 3D
- STB Velocity 64 Video
- Stealth 64 Video 3000
- Stingray 64/Video
- Various Rackmount SBCs
SCSI CONTROLLERS
- LSI Logic 53C8xx and 53C1010 chipsets, e.g., cards from: Tekram, LSI Logic, Symbios, Compaq, NCR, I-O DATA, ASUS. The chip numbers matter more than the brand. LSI Logic now owns Symbios and Mylex. You may need to configure the SCSI BIOS to "START UNIT" (spin up) the bootable drive so I/O works for the main BIOS. Also, beware 53C1020/1030 cards--they are "Fusion/MPT" and cannot be supported by this driver.
- Buslogic BT-948 or BT-958 (AKA Mylex multimaster series). These aren't being made any more, but you might be able to buy them used.
- Adaptec 1540 or 1542 for the ISA bus
- Ultrastor 14F ISA or 34F VLB
KEYBOARDS
Any PS/2 or USB keyboard should work. The bootstraps require PS/2 "emulation" in your BIOS to make USB keyboards work.
MICE
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
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:
- Acer TravelMate 4052 WmLi (no wireless, no sound)
- Acer Aspire 5024WLMi (wireless and sound not tested, *nousbohci=1 required; tested with 9atom)
- Asus F7400
- Compaq Presario 1500 (ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW, Intel PRO 100/VE i82562, usb mouse works)
- Dell Inspiron 2650 (mouse not working though)
- Dell Inspiron 70n 7000
- Dell Inspiron 1000 (no ether, no sound, cardbus not tested)
- IBM Thinkpad 560, 560E, 600E, T20, T21, T23, T30 (using Philippe Anel's Radeon Drivers), T42p (no wireless), X20, X40, X60
- NEC Versa LX, SX
- Sharp Actius A250
- Sony Vaio PGC-105k (uk)
- Sony Vaio PCG-GR114EK
- Toshiba Portege 3440CT
- Toshiba Tecra 750CDM
- HP Compaq nx6315 (No net)
- JVC MP-XP3
The following laptops worked in previous releases and may work in the current one:
- AT&T GIS Globalyst 250
- Compaq Armada 7710 MT
- Dell Dimension cpi 333
- IBM Thinkpad 560X, 570
- NEC Versa 6030X, 6200MX
- Sony VAIO PCG 747
- Toshiba Satellite 2800
The following laptops are known not to work with Plan 9:
- Compaq Armada 7800 (does not detect all physical memory, runs out, apparently hardware cursor doesn't work either)
- Compaq LTE 5300 (unsupported video card Cirrus Logic GD7543)<- Are You sure about this? I think CL-GD7543 is well supported (Generic 640x480 LCD), I had a COMPAQ Armada 1120T, but the problem was the memory (24MB) not the graphical chip set! see google groups
- Dell Inspiron 4000, 5000e (unsupported video card ATI Mobility M3)
- Zenith Znote 425 (not enough RAM)
CARDBUS AND PCMCIA CONTROLLERS
The following cardbus controllers are supported:
- Ricoh 476 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- Ricoh 478 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- TI PCI-1131 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1250 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1450 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-AC51 Cardbus controller
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.
AUDIO
Supported audio devices:
- Sound Blaster 16 or later, ISA card
- ESS 1688 running in 8-bit SBPro mode
- most USB audio devices
- Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (with code addition from
Supported but not as well tested:
- Any Sound Blaster 16 clones (NOT Sound Blaster Pro clones)
USB audio devices that have been reported to work:
- Edirol UA-1X (recording untested, but believed to work)
- Edirol UA-3
- Philips USB speakers, model DSS 370/17
- Xitel AN1
- Xitel Pro HiFi-Link (setting and reading back the volume works, but does not seem to affect the playback.)
- Xitel MD-Port DG2
- Onkyo SE-U55X
- Onkyo SE-U55GX
- Auditek USB speakers using C-Media CM102 chip (supports 48000Hz playback only)
- Creative Sound Blaster MP3+
- Creative Sound Blaster live! ( Can't set record speed )
- M-Audio FastTrack USB (recording untested; gets "Can't set record speed" message on startup; setting and volume succesds but has no effect.)
FLOPPY DISKS
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.
MAGNETO-OPTICAL DISK JUKEBOXES
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:
- HP 330FX (choline)
- HP 160FX (original emelie)
- HP 1200EX (emelie)
We've had limited experience with these models (bought used), and they failed within a few months, one mechanically and the other electronically:
- HP 40FX
- HP 80EX
The 160FX and up seem to be built much more sturdily than the smaller jukeboxes, which are the size of large tower PCs.
MOTHERBOARDS
- ASUS A8R32-MVP (onboard NIC not supported, use a PCI NIC instead)
THIN CLIENT (terminal/CPU/Auth-server)
- IGEL LX 3210 (Via C3 Esther 400Mhz, 256MB RAM, network, graphics(VGA+DVI), usb, PS/2,) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- IGEL LX 4210 (Via C3 Esther 800Mhz, 128MB RAM, network, graphics(VGA), usb, PS/2,) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- HP Compaq T5000 (Via C3 Samuel 400Mhz - BIOS says Via Eden - , 128MB RAM, network vt6102, graphics(VGA), usb, PS/2) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
This page lists hardware known to work with Plan 9. Most hardware is listed by chipset, you may need to know what chipset your particular cards use. There is also a list of known broken hardware.
IDE/ATAPI CONTROLLERS
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).
- ALi M1543, M5288 SATA
- AMD 755, 756, 766, 768, 3111, CS5536
- AMD/ATI SB400, 200M, 4379 SATA
- CMD 640B, 646
- HighPoint HPT366
- Intel PIIX, PIIX3, PIIX4, ICH, ICH0, ICH2-7, ICH9, 6300ESB
- NS PC87415
- nVidia nForce 1-4, MCP 55, 61, 65, 69, 430
- PC-Tech RZ1000
- Promise PDC202xx, Ultra/133 TX2, 20378
- ServerWorks IB6566
- SiL 3112 SATA, 3114 SATA/RAID
- SiS 962
- VIA 82C686, VT8237 SATA/RAID
SATA CONTROLLERS
Plan 9 supports a few SATA controllers in their native AHCI mode, as opposed to the IDE-compatibility mode that some of them offer.
- AMD SB600
- Intel 63xxESB
- Intel 82801GxM, for x = B or H
- Intel ICH8, ICH9
The non-AHCI Marvell 88SX series four- and eight-port PCI-X chipsets are also supported.
ATA-OVER-ETHERNET DEVICES
Plan 9 supports access to ATA-over-Ethernet devices.
USB
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.
ETHERNET
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:
- Intel 8259x 10Gb
- Myricom 10Gb
- Alteon, DEC, or SGI Acenic fiber Gigabit
- Intel 8254x PRO/1000 Gigabit
- Intel 8256x, 8257x Gigabit PCI-Express
- National Semiconductor DP83820 Gigabit
- Netgear GA620 Gigabit (discouraged due to large firmware blob)
- Realtek 8110S/8169S Gigabit
- Via Velocity Gigabit
- 3Com 3C562, 3C589, and 3C589E PCMCIA
- 3Com 3C450, 3C575, 3C59x, 3C90x, 3CSOHO100-TX
- Accton EtherPair-PCMCIA EN2216
- AMD 79C970
- D-Link DFE-538TX, DFE-560TXD
- Dell TrueMobile 1150 wireless
- Digital (now Intel) 2114x and clones. (Tulip, PIC, PIC-II, Centaur, Digital DE-500)
- EtherFast 10/100 PC Card
- Intel 82562EM/EZ/ET/VE, 8255x PRO/100
- Intel 82801DB PRO/100 VE
- Intersil Prism2.5 wireless
- Linksys EC2T Combo PCMCIA EtherCard, NB10T
- Linksys WPC-11 wireless
- Lucent/Agere/Avaya/Orinoco Wavelan wireless
- NE2000 clones
- National Semiconductor DP83815, DP8390
- Netgear FA310, FA311, FA312, FA410TX, FA411 PCMCIA
- Realtek 8029, 8139 - DL10038(D) (Remark of Realtek 8139)
- SMC 1211, 8040TX PCMCIA, 91CXX PCMCIA
- VIA Rhine VT6102 (pxe-bootable)
- VIA Rhine II VT6103 (pxe-bootable)
- Western Digital/SMC WD8003, WD8013, WD8216
- Winbond 89C940
VESA VIDEO CARDS
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!)
- Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (Dell desktops)
- Intel 82845G Integrated Graphics Controller (Compaq Evo D510 SFF)
- Intel 855GM Integrated Graphics Device (Thinkpad X40)
- Radeon 9200 Mobile (Compaq NX7010)
- Radeon Mobility 9600 (ThinkPad T42p)
- Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 LW (Compaq Presario 1500)
- Radeon R200 QH (Fire GL 8700 and 8800)
- Radeon RV280 (9200 SL)
- Nvidia Quadro4 980 XGL
- SiS630 onboard
- SiS630 ST onboard (JVC MP-XP3)
- VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700 VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP
(Some of the cards in this list have been moved to the main table)
The following cards are known not to work with VESA:
- Neomagic NM2360/MagicMedia 256ZX (Thinkpad 600X): Blank screen.
- Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436/46 (no VESA support?)
- AMD Geode GX2. Blank screen. Bug identified by Russ Cox, but hard to solve.
VGA CARDS AND CHIPSETS
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:
- ATI Graphics Xpression
- ATI Xpert 98
- ATI xpert@work
- ATI Xpert LCD
- #9FX Reality 334
- Diamond Stealth3D 2000 vers 1.04
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001
- Diamond SpeedStar 64
Cards supported in the first and second editions but not tested in the current system:
- #9FX Reality 332
- #9GXE Level-11, Level-12, Level-16
- #9GXE 64
- #9GXE 64pro
- Diamond SpeedStar Pro
- Hercules Terminator
- NCR 3230
- Orchid Fahrenheit 1280
- Orchid Kelvin 64
- Quadtel S3 86C801, 86C805
- STB PowerGraph X-24
- STB Velocity 3D
- STB Velocity 64 Video
- Stealth 64 Video 3000
- Stingray 64/Video
- Various Rackmount SBCs
SCSI CONTROLLERS
- LSI Logic 53C8xx and 53C1010 chipsets, e.g., cards from: Tekram, LSI Logic, Symbios, Compaq, NCR, I-O DATA, ASUS. The chip numbers matter more than the brand. LSI Logic now owns Symbios and Mylex. You may need to configure the SCSI BIOS to "START UNIT" (spin up) the bootable drive so I/O works for the main BIOS. Also, beware 53C1020/1030 cards--they are "Fusion/MPT" and cannot be supported by this driver.
- Buslogic BT-948 or BT-958 (AKA Mylex multimaster series). These aren't being made any more, but you might be able to buy them used.
- Adaptec 1540 or 1542 for the ISA bus
- Ultrastor 14F ISA or 34F VLB
KEYBOARDS
Any PS/2 or USB keyboard should work. The bootstraps require PS/2 "emulation" in your BIOS to make USB keyboards work.
MICE
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
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:
- Acer TravelMate 4052 WmLi (no wireless, no sound)
- Acer Aspire 5024WLMi (wireless and sound not tested, *nousbohci=1 required; tested with 9atom)
- Asus F7400
- Compaq Presario 1500 (ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW, Intel PRO 100/VE i82562, usb mouse works)
- Dell Inspiron 2650 (mouse not working though)
- Dell Inspiron 70n 7000
- Dell Inspiron 1000 (no ether, no sound, cardbus not tested)
- IBM Thinkpad 560, 560E, 600E, T20, T21, T23, T30 (using Philippe Anel's Radeon Drivers), T42p (no wireless), X20, X40, X60
- NEC Versa LX, SX
- Sharp Actius A250
- Sony Vaio PGC-105k (uk)
- Sony Vaio PCG-GR114EK
- Toshiba Portege 3440CT
- Toshiba Tecra 750CDM
- HP Compaq nx6315 (No net)
- JVC MP-XP3
The following laptops worked in previous releases and may work in the current one:
- AT&T GIS Globalyst 250
- Compaq Armada 7710 MT
- Dell Dimension cpi 333
- IBM Thinkpad 560X, 570
- NEC Versa 6030X, 6200MX
- Sony VAIO PCG 747
- Toshiba Satellite 2800
The following laptops are known not to work with Plan 9:
- Compaq Armada 7800 (does not detect all physical memory, runs out, apparently hardware cursor doesn't work either)
- Compaq LTE 5300 (unsupported video card Cirrus Logic GD7543)<- Are You sure about this? I think CL-GD7543 is well supported (Generic 640x480 LCD), I had a COMPAQ Armada 1120T, but the problem was the memory (24MB) not the graphical chip set! see google groups
- Dell Inspiron 4000, 5000e (unsupported video card ATI Mobility M3)
- Zenith Znote 425 (not enough RAM)
CARDBUS AND PCMCIA CONTROLLERS
The following cardbus controllers are supported:
- Ricoh 476 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- Ricoh 478 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- TI PCI-1131 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1250 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1450 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-AC51 Cardbus controller
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.
AUDIO
Supported audio devices:
- Sound Blaster 16 or later, ISA card
- ESS 1688 running in 8-bit SBPro mode
- most USB audio devices
- Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (with code addition from http://kamalatta.dyndns.org/config/ac97k.tar
Supported but not as well tested:
- Any Sound Blaster 16 clones (NOT Sound Blaster Pro clones)
USB audio devices that have been reported to work:
- Edirol UA-1X (recording untested, but believed to work)
- Edirol UA-3
- Philips USB speakers, model DSS 370/17
- Xitel AN1
- Xitel Pro HiFi-Link (setting and reading back the volume works, but does not seem to affect the playback.)
- Xitel MD-Port DG2
- Onkyo SE-U55X
- Onkyo SE-U55GX
- Auditek USB speakers using C-Media CM102 chip (supports 48000Hz playback only)
- Creative Sound Blaster MP3+
- Creative Sound Blaster live! ( Can't set record speed )
- M-Audio FastTrack USB (recording untested; gets "Can't set record speed" message on startup; setting and volume succesds but has no effect.)
FLOPPY DISKS
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.
MAGNETO-OPTICAL DISK JUKEBOXES
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:
- HP 330FX (choline)
- HP 160FX (original emelie)
- HP 1200EX (emelie)
We've had limited experience with these models (bought used), and they failed within a few months, one mechanically and the other electronically:
- HP 40FX
- HP 80EX
The 160FX and up seem to be built much more sturdily than the smaller jukeboxes, which are the size of large tower PCs.
MOTHERBOARDS
- ASUS A8R32-MVP (onboard NIC not supported, use a PCI NIC instead)
THIN CLIENT (terminal/CPU/Auth-server)
- IGEL LX 3210 (Via C3 Esther 400Mhz, 256MB RAM, network, graphics(VGA+DVI), usb, PS/2,) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
This page lists hardware known to work with Plan 9. Most hardware is listed by chipset, you may need to know what chipset your particular cards use. There is also a list of known broken hardware.
IDE/ATAPI CONTROLLERS
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).
- ALi M1543, M5288 SATA
- AMD 755, 756, 766, 768, 3111, CS5536
- AMD/ATI SB400, 200M, 4379 SATA
- CMD 640B, 646
- HighPoint HPT366
- Intel PIIX, PIIX3, PIIX4, ICH, ICH0, ICH2-7, ICH9, 6300ESB
- NS PC87415
- nVidia nForce 1-4, MCP 55, 61, 65, 69, 430
- PC-Tech RZ1000
- Promise PDC202xx, Ultra/133 TX2, 20378
- ServerWorks IB6566
- SiL 3112 SATA, 3114 SATA/RAID
- SiS 962
- VIA 82C686, VT8237 SATA/RAID
SATA CONTROLLERS
Plan 9 supports a few SATA controllers in their native AHCI mode, as opposed to the IDE-compatibility mode that some of them offer.
- AMD SB600
- Intel 63xxESB
- Intel 82801GxM, for x = B or H
- Intel ICH8, ICH9
The non-AHCI Marvell 88SX series four- and eight-port PCI-X chipsets are also supported.
ATA-OVER-ETHERNET DEVICES
Plan 9 supports access to ATA-over-Ethernet devices.
USB
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.
ETHERNET
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:
- Intel 8259x 10Gb
- Myricom 10Gb
- Alteon, DEC, or SGI Acenic fiber Gigabit
- Intel 8254x PRO/1000 Gigabit
- Intel 8256x, 8257x Gigabit PCI-Express
- National Semiconductor DP83820 Gigabit
- Netgear GA620 Gigabit (discouraged due to large firmware blob)
- Realtek 8110S/8169S Gigabit
- Via Velocity Gigabit
- 3Com 3C562, 3C589, and 3C589E PCMCIA
- 3Com 3C450, 3C575, 3C59x, 3C90x, 3CSOHO100-TX
- Accton EtherPair-PCMCIA EN2216
- AMD 79C970
- D-Link DFE-538TX, DFE-560TXD
- Dell TrueMobile 1150 wireless
- Digital (now Intel) 2114x and clones. (Tulip, PIC, PIC-II, Centaur, Digital DE-500)
- EtherFast 10/100 PC Card
- Intel 82562EM/EZ/ET/VE, 8255x PRO/100
- Intel 82801DB PRO/100 VE
- Intersil Prism2.5 wireless
- Linksys EC2T Combo PCMCIA EtherCard, NB10T
- Linksys WPC-11 wireless
- Lucent/Agere/Avaya/Orinoco Wavelan wireless
- NE2000 clones
- National Semiconductor DP83815, DP8390
- Netgear FA310, FA311, FA312, FA410TX, FA411 PCMCIA
- Realtek 8029, 8139 - DL10038(D) (Remark of Realtek 8139)
- SMC 1211, 8040TX PCMCIA, 91CXX PCMCIA
- VIA Rhine VT6102 (pxe-bootable)
- VIA Rhine II VT6103 (pxe-bootable)
- Western Digital/SMC WD8003, WD8013, WD8216
- Winbond 89C940
VESA VIDEO CARDS
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!)
- Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (Dell desktops)
- Intel 82845G Integrated Graphics Controller (Compaq Evo D510 SFF)
- Intel 855GM Integrated Graphics Device (Thinkpad X40)
- Radeon 9200 Mobile (Compaq NX7010)
- Radeon Mobility 9600 (ThinkPad T42p)
- Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 LW (Compaq Presario 1500)
- Radeon R200 QH (Fire GL 8700 and 8800)
- Radeon RV280 (9200 SL)
- Nvidia Quadro4 980 XGL
- SiS630 onboard
- SiS630 ST onboard (JVC MP-XP3)
(Some of the cards in this list have been moved to the main table)
The following cards are known not to work with VESA:
- Neomagic NM2360/MagicMedia 256ZX (Thinkpad 600X): Blank screen.
- Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436/46 (no VESA support?)
- AMD Geode GX2. Blank screen. Bug identified by Russ Cox, but hard to solve.
VGA CARDS AND CHIPSETS
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:
- ATI Graphics Xpression
- ATI Xpert 98
- ATI xpert@work
- ATI Xpert LCD
- #9FX Reality 334
- Diamond Stealth3D 2000 vers 1.04
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001
- Diamond SpeedStar 64
Cards supported in the first and second editions but not tested in the current system:
- #9FX Reality 332
- #9GXE Level-11, Level-12, Level-16
- #9GXE 64
- #9GXE 64pro
- Diamond SpeedStar Pro
- Hercules Terminator
- NCR 3230
- Orchid Fahrenheit 1280
- Orchid Kelvin 64
- Quadtel S3 86C801, 86C805
- STB PowerGraph X-24
- STB Velocity 3D
- STB Velocity 64 Video
- Stealth 64 Video 3000
- Stingray 64/Video
- Various Rackmount SBCs
SCSI CONTROLLERS
- LSI Logic 53C8xx and 53C1010 chipsets, e.g., cards from: Tekram, LSI Logic, Symbios, Compaq, NCR, I-O DATA, ASUS. The chip numbers matter more than the brand. LSI Logic now owns Symbios and Mylex. You may need to configure the SCSI BIOS to "START UNIT" (spin up) the bootable drive so I/O works for the main BIOS. Also, beware 53C1020/1030 cards--they are "Fusion/MPT" and cannot be supported by this driver.
- Buslogic BT-948 or BT-958 (AKA Mylex multimaster series). These aren't being made any more, but you might be able to buy them used.
- Adaptec 1540 or 1542 for the ISA bus
- Ultrastor 14F ISA or 34F VLB
KEYBOARDS
Any PS/2 or USB keyboard should work. The bootstraps require PS/2 "emulation" in your BIOS to make USB keyboards work.
MICE
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
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:
- Acer TravelMate 4052 WmLi (no wireless, no sound)
- Acer Aspire 5024WLMi (wireless and sound not tested, *nousbohci=1 required; tested with 9atom)
- Asus F7400
- Compaq Presario 1500 (ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW, Intel PRO 100/VE i82562, usb mouse works)
- Dell Inspiron 2650 (mouse not working though)
- Dell Inspiron 70n 7000
- Dell Inspiron 1000 (no ether, no sound, cardbus not tested)
- IBM Thinkpad 560, 560E, 600E, T20, T21, T23, T30 (using Philippe Anel's Radeon Drivers), T42p (no wireless), X20, X40, X60
- NEC Versa LX, SX
- Sharp Actius A250
- Sony Vaio PGC-105k (uk)
- Sony Vaio PCG-GR114EK
- Toshiba Portege 3440CT
- Toshiba Tecra 750CDM
- HP Compaq nx6315 (No net)
- JVC MP-XP3
The following laptops worked in previous releases and may work in the current one:
- AT&T GIS Globalyst 250
- Compaq Armada 7710 MT
- Dell Dimension cpi 333
- IBM Thinkpad 560X, 570
- NEC Versa 6030X, 6200MX
- Sony VAIO PCG 747
- Toshiba Satellite 2800
The following laptops are known not to work with Plan 9:
- Compaq Armada 7800 (does not detect all physical memory, runs out, apparently hardware cursor doesn't work either)
- Compaq LTE 5300 (unsupported video card Cirrus Logic GD7543)<- Are You sure about this? I think CL-GD7543 is well supported (Generic 640x480 LCD), I had a COMPAQ Armada 1120T, but the problem was the memory (24MB) not the graphical chip set! see google groups
- Dell Inspiron 4000, 5000e (unsupported video card ATI Mobility M3)
- Zenith Znote 425 (not enough RAM)
CARDBUS AND PCMCIA CONTROLLERS
The following cardbus controllers are supported:
- Ricoh 476 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- Ricoh 478 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- TI PCI-1131 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1250 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1450 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-AC51 Cardbus controller
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.
AUDIO
Supported audio devices:
- Sound Blaster 16 or later, ISA card
- ESS 1688 running in 8-bit SBPro mode
- most USB audio devices
- Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (with code addition from http://kamalatta.dyndns.org/config/ac97k.tar
Supported but not as well tested:
- Any Sound Blaster 16 clones (NOT Sound Blaster Pro clones)
USB audio devices that have been reported to work:
- Edirol UA-1X (recording untested, but believed to work)
- Edirol UA-3
- Philips USB speakers, model DSS 370/17
- Xitel AN1
- Xitel Pro HiFi-Link (setting and reading back the volume works, but does not seem to affect the playback.)
- Xitel MD-Port DG2
- Onkyo SE-U55X
- Onkyo SE-U55GX
- Auditek USB speakers using C-Media CM102 chip (supports 48000Hz playback only)
- Creative Sound Blaster MP3+
- Creative Sound Blaster live! ( Can't set record speed )
- M-Audio FastTrack USB (recording untested; gets "Can't set record speed" message on startup; setting and volume succesds but has no effect.)
FLOPPY DISKS
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.
MAGNETO-OPTICAL DISK JUKEBOXES
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:
- HP 330FX (choline)
- HP 160FX (original emelie)
- HP 1200EX (emelie)
We've had limited experience with these models (bought used), and they failed within a few months, one mechanically and the other electronically:
- HP 40FX
- HP 80EX
The 160FX and up seem to be built much more sturdily than the smaller jukeboxes, which are the size of large tower PCs.
MOTHERBOARDS
- ASUS A8R32-MVP (onboard NIC not supported, use a PCI NIC instead)
THIN CLIENT (terminal/CPU/Auth-server)
- IGEL LX 3210 (Via C3 Esther 400Mhz, 256MB RAM, network, graphics(VGA+DVI), usb, PS/2,) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- HP Compaq T5000 (Via C3 Samuel 400Mhz - BIOS says Via Eden - , 128MB RAM, network vt6102, graphics(VGA+DVI), usb, PS/2) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
This page lists hardware known to work with Plan 9. Most hardware is listed by chipset, you may need to know what chipset your particular cards use. There is also a list of known broken hardware.
IDE/ATAPI CONTROLLERS
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).
- ALi M1543, M5288 SATA
- AMD 755, 756, 766, 768, 3111, CS5536
- AMD/ATI SB400, 200M, 4379 SATA
- CMD 640B, 646
- HighPoint HPT366
- Intel PIIX, PIIX3, PIIX4, ICH, ICH0, ICH2-7, ICH9, 6300ESB
- NS PC87415
- nVidia nForce 1-4, MCP 55, 61, 65, 69, 430
- PC-Tech RZ1000
- Promise PDC202xx, Ultra/133 TX2, 20378
- ServerWorks IB6566
- SiL 3112 SATA, 3114 SATA/RAID
- SiS 962
- VIA 82C686, VT8237 SATA/RAID
SATA CONTROLLERS
Plan 9 supports a few SATA controllers in their native AHCI mode, as opposed to the IDE-compatibility mode that some of them offer.
- AMD SB600
- Intel 63xxESB
- Intel 82801GxM, for x = B or H
- Intel ICH8, ICH9
The non-AHCI Marvell 88SX series four- and eight-port PCI-X chipsets are also supported.
ATA-OVER-ETHERNET DEVICES
Plan 9 supports access to ATA-over-Ethernet devices.
USB
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.
ETHERNET
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:
- Intel 8259x 10Gb
- Myricom 10Gb
- Alteon, DEC, or SGI Acenic fiber Gigabit
- Intel 8254x PRO/1000 Gigabit
- Intel 8256x, 8257x Gigabit PCI-Express
- National Semiconductor DP83820 Gigabit
- Netgear GA620 Gigabit (discouraged due to large firmware blob)
- Realtek 8110S/8169S Gigabit
- Via Velocity Gigabit
- 3Com 3C562, 3C589, and 3C589E PCMCIA
- 3Com 3C450, 3C575, 3C59x, 3C90x, 3CSOHO100-TX
- Accton EtherPair-PCMCIA EN2216
- AMD 79C970
- D-Link DFE-538TX, DFE-560TXD
- Dell TrueMobile 1150 wireless
- Digital (now Intel) 2114x and clones. (Tulip, PIC, PIC-II, Centaur, Digital DE-500)
- EtherFast 10/100 PC Card
- Intel 82562EM/EZ/ET/VE, 8255x PRO/100
- Intel 82801DB PRO/100 VE
- Intersil Prism2.5 wireless
- Linksys EC2T Combo PCMCIA EtherCard, NB10T
- Linksys WPC-11 wireless
- Lucent/Agere/Avaya/Orinoco Wavelan wireless
- NE2000 clones
- National Semiconductor DP83815, DP8390
- Netgear FA310, FA311, FA312, FA410TX, FA411 PCMCIA
- Realtek 8029, 8139 - DL10038(D) (Remark of Realtek 8139)
- SMC 1211, 8040TX PCMCIA, 91CXX PCMCIA
- VIA Rhine VT6102 (pxe-bootable)
- VIA Rhine II VT6103 (pxe-bootable)
- Western Digital/SMC WD8003, WD8013, WD8216
- Winbond 89C940
VESA VIDEO CARDS
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!)
- Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (Dell desktops)
- Intel 82845G Integrated Graphics Controller (Compaq Evo D510 SFF)
- Intel 855GM Integrated Graphics Device (Thinkpad X40)
- Radeon 9200 Mobile (Compaq NX7010)
- Radeon Mobility 9600 (ThinkPad T42p)
- Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 LW (Compaq Presario 1500)
- Radeon R200 QH (Fire GL 8700 and 8800)
- Radeon RV280 (9200 SL)
- Nvidia Quadro4 980 XGL
- SiS630 onboard
- SiS630 ST onboard (JVC MP-XP3)
(Some of the cards in this list have been moved to the main table)
The following cards are known not to work with VESA:
- Neomagic NM2360/MagicMedia 256ZX (Thinkpad 600X): Blank screen.
- Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436/46 (no VESA support?)
- AMD Geode GX2. Blank screen. Bug identified by Russ Cox, but hard to solve.
VGA CARDS AND CHIPSETS
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:
- ATI Graphics Xpression
- ATI Xpert 98
- ATI xpert@work
- ATI Xpert LCD
- #9FX Reality 334
- Diamond Stealth3D 2000 vers 1.04
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001
- Diamond SpeedStar 64
Cards supported in the first and second editions but not tested in the current system:
- #9FX Reality 332
- #9GXE Level-11, Level-12, Level-16
- #9GXE 64
- #9GXE 64pro
- Diamond SpeedStar Pro
- Hercules Terminator
- NCR 3230
- Orchid Fahrenheit 1280
- Orchid Kelvin 64
- Quadtel S3 86C801, 86C805
- STB PowerGraph X-24
- STB Velocity 3D
- STB Velocity 64 Video
- Stealth 64 Video 3000
- Stingray 64/Video
- Various Rackmount SBCs
SCSI CONTROLLERS
- LSI Logic 53C8xx and 53C1010 chipsets, e.g., cards from: Tekram, LSI Logic, Symbios, Compaq, NCR, I-O DATA, ASUS. The chip numbers matter more than the brand. LSI Logic now owns Symbios and Mylex. You may need to configure the SCSI BIOS to "START UNIT" (spin up) the bootable drive so I/O works for the main BIOS. Also, beware 53C1020/1030 cards--they are "Fusion/MPT" and cannot be supported by this driver.
- Buslogic BT-948 or BT-958 (AKA Mylex multimaster series). These aren't being made any more, but you might be able to buy them used.
- Adaptec 1540 or 1542 for the ISA bus
- Ultrastor 14F ISA or 34F VLB
KEYBOARDS
Any PS/2 or USB keyboard should work. The bootstraps require PS/2 "emulation" in your BIOS to make USB keyboards work.
MICE
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
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:
- Acer TravelMate 4052 WmLi (no wireless, no sound)
- Acer Aspire 5024WLMi (wireless and sound not tested, *nousbohci=1 required; tested with 9atom)
- Asus F7400
- Compaq Presario 1500 (ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW, Intel PRO 100/VE i82562, usb mouse works)
- Dell Inspiron 2650 (mouse not working though)
- Dell Inspiron 70n 7000
- Dell Inspiron 1000 (no ether, no sound, cardbus not tested)
- IBM Thinkpad 560, 560E, 600E, T20, T21, T23, T30 (using Philippe Anel's Radeon Drivers), T42p (no wireless), X20, X40, X60
- NEC Versa LX, SX
- Sharp Actius A250
- Sony Vaio PGC-105k (uk)
- Sony Vaio PCG-GR114EK
- Toshiba Portege 3440CT
- Toshiba Tecra 750CDM
- HP Compaq nx6315 (No net)
- JVC MP-XP3
The following laptops worked in previous releases and may work in the current one:
- AT&T GIS Globalyst 250
- Compaq Armada 7710 MT
- Dell Dimension cpi 333
- IBM Thinkpad 560X, 570
- NEC Versa 6030X, 6200MX
- Sony VAIO PCG 747
- Toshiba Satellite 2800
The following laptops are known not to work with Plan 9:
- Compaq Armada 7800 (does not detect all physical memory, runs out, apparently hardware cursor doesn't work either)
- Compaq LTE 5300 (unsupported video card Cirrus Logic GD7543)<- Are You sure about this? I think CL-GD7543 is well supported (Generic 640x480 LCD), I had a COMPAQ Armada 1120T, but the problem was the memory (24MB) not the graphical chip set! see google groups
- Dell Inspiron 4000, 5000e (unsupported video card ATI Mobility M3)
- Zenith Znote 425 (not enough RAM)
CARDBUS AND PCMCIA CONTROLLERS
The following cardbus controllers are supported:
- Ricoh 476 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- Ricoh 478 PCI/Cardbus bridge
- TI PCI-1131 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1250 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-1450 Cardbus controller
- TI PCI-AC51 Cardbus controller
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.
AUDIO
Supported audio devices:
- Sound Blaster 16 or later, ISA card
- ESS 1688 running in 8-bit SBPro mode
- most USB audio devices
- Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (with code addition from http://kamalatta.dyndns.org/config/ac97k.tar
Supported but not as well tested:
- Any Sound Blaster 16 clones (NOT Sound Blaster Pro clones)
USB audio devices that have been reported to work:
- Edirol UA-1X (recording untested, but believed to work)
- Edirol UA-3
- Philips USB speakers, model DSS 370/17
- Xitel AN1
- Xitel Pro HiFi-Link (setting and reading back the volume works, but does not seem to affect the playback.)
- Xitel MD-Port DG2
- Onkyo SE-U55X
- Onkyo SE-U55GX
- Auditek USB speakers using C-Media CM102 chip (supports 48000Hz playback only)
- Creative Sound Blaster MP3+
- Creative Sound Blaster live! ( Can't set record speed )
- M-Audio FastTrack USB (recording untested; gets "Can't set record speed" message on startup; setting and volume succesds but has no effect.)
FLOPPY DISKS
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.
MAGNETO-OPTICAL DISK JUKEBOXES
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:
- HP 330FX (choline)
- HP 160FX (original emelie)
- HP 1200EX (emelie)
We've had limited experience with these models (bought used), and they failed within a few months, one mechanically and the other electronically:
- HP 40FX
- HP 80EX
The 160FX and up seem to be built much more sturdily than the smaller jukeboxes, which are the size of large tower PCs.
MOTHERBOARDS
- ASUS A8R32-MVP (onboard NIC not supported, use a PCI NIC instead)
THIN CLIENT (terminal/CPU/Auth-server)
- IGEL LX 3210 (Via C3 Esther 400Mhz, 256MB RAM, network, graphics(VGA+DVI), usb, PS/2,) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
- HP Compaq T5000 (Via C3 Samuel 400Mhz - BIOS says Via Eden - , 128MB RAM, network vt6102, graphics(VGA+DVI), usb, PS/2) - Sound (Via AC97) doesn't work)
