This document was originally hosted at the ETHZ. It remains in the WayBack archive under the ETH license.
Page index: [ Motherboard | Processor | RAM | Device drivers | Disk | Display | Communication | Modem | PCMCIA | Mouse | Sound | USB | Example machines ]
This page is under construction and will be used for installation information and user installation reports. Please send your installation reports for inclusion on this page. The information contained herein applies to the most recent Alpha / Beta versions.
Subjects treated in linked documents:
- BIOS support
- Diskette support
- Keyboard support
- Printer support
- Sound support
- Speaker support
- Frequently Asked Questions on the Native Oberon OS (beta version)
You will find a good support for hardware and software considerations not directly related to Native Oberon in the Operating System resource centre documents maintained by Chris Lattner.
Native Oberon runs on single processor motherboards of all brands, even on older ones, with ISA, PCI and AGP expansion slots in any combination. AGP expansion cards are similar to PCI cards from the software point-of-view. USB too is supported, but to a lesser extent. IrDA is not supported.
Oberon's PCI analyser tool
The PCI analyser command PCITools.Scan is designed to obtain all the required information on the installed PCI and AGP devices. The PCI bus is scanned and all the devices found are listed, along with a textual description extracted from an ancillary file. Some of the most valuable informations displayed are: bus number, device number, device class and subclass, vendor name and code, device name and code, IRQ assigned to the device. Keep in mind that non-PCI devices may also use IRQs and that IRQ conflicts may be at the origin of installation problems (e.g. black screen when the display device IRQ is in conflict) or other malfunctioning (e.g. network card IRQ conflict).
A full-fledged Oberon system is not required to use the tool. Booting from an Oberon-0 diskette is enough and can be of great help even to non-Oberon users. Alternatively, use the Oberon Utility Disk.
Installed hardware inspection
The needed information about the installed hardware can ideally be collected in advance of an Oberon installation with the facilities of an installed operating system. This can be useful when the manufacturer's documentation is not available or for a noname computer.
- Windows 2000/NT: follow "Start -> Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Diagnostics"
- Windows 95/98: follow "Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System"
- Linux: view or print /var/log/boot.msg
Besides that, there exists a profusion of published and downloadable software for analyzing, diagnosing and performance testing of hardware components. E.g.
- PC Analyser [expired] - DOS
- Dr. Hardware - "2002" for Win9x/ME/NT/2000/XP or Sysinfo for DOS
Native Oberon runs on these 32-bit architecture processors
- Intel processors, starting from the i386, and equivalent processors offered by other manufacturers such as AMD and Cyrix. Native Oberon has been reported to work on AMD K5 and K6 series chips, Cyrix MII-333. If no coprocessor is found, the emulator module FPA.Mod will take its function over.
- Transmeta processor TM5400 as reported by Thomas Kistler.
- StrongARM processors based on the ARM Architecture Version 4: SA 110, SA 1110. Theoretically, it should run on Intel PCS Application Processors, but that was not tested.
For more information, see ETH Oberon Compilers.
Native Oberon supports maximally 128MB, because of the way page tables are allocated in low memory. This could be improved in procedure Kernel.InitMemory. If more than 128 MB are installed, only the first 128MB are used.
Device drivers must be installed for the various device categories reviewed in this document. Depending on the device's importance, a driver installation may have to take place immediately at system start or may be delayed to a later time:
- A disk driver (ATA/EIDE or SCSI), located on the boot device, is installed straight from the start by the boot loader.
- At system start, a VGA driver is installed which is soon replaced by a display driver specified in the Display= and associated configuration strings. Other strings may command the installation of further drivers.
- At a later time, a driver module is dynamically loaded when needed, just like any other Oberon module, by executing an appropriate Oberon command. The installation command depends on the controller. A driver is immediately operational: no reboot is needed. To automate the installation, it suffices to edit a line containing the appropriate installation command in the System.InitCommands group of Oberon.Text. Commenting out the line is enough to bar the installation.
Drivers dynamically loaded on demand remain in memory during the entire session. Consequently, a driver must not be uninstalled, in principle. Exceptionally, say for test purposes, a driver may have to be unloaded (the modules importing it must be unloaded first).
Cfr. Disk support
| Manufacturer | Controller / Chipset | Vendor / Device |
|---|---|---|
| Intel Corporation | 82371AB/EB PIIX4 IDE | 8086H / 7111H |
| Controller | Vendor / Device | Status |
|---|---|---|
| AVA-2902A/E | 9004H / 5078H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AVA-2904 | 9004H / 5078H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AVA-2910 (AIC-7850P Fast/Wide SCSI II) | 9004H / 5078H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AIC-7855 Fast SCSI Controller | 9004H / 5578H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AIC-7860 SCSI Controller | 9004H / 6078H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AIC-7870P Fast/Wide SCSI II Chip | 9004H / 7078H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-2940/W Fast/Wide SCSI | 9004H / 7178H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-3940/W Dual-Channel FAST/Wide SCSI | 9004H / 7278H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-3985 4 Channel RAID SCSI | 9004H / 7378H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-2944W SCSI | 9004H / 7478H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-3940U/UW/UWD Ultra/Ultra Wide/Dual SCSI | 9004H / 8278H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-398X (AIC-7883U) | 9004H / 8378H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-2944UW SCSI | 9004H / 8478H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-2940U/2940UW Dual | 9004H / 7895H | Recognized / Problem reported (1) |
| AHA-394xAU/AUW/AUWD AIC-7895B | 9004H / 7895H | Recognized / Problem reported |
| AHA-2940U2W/U2B | 9005H / 0010H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-2950U2W Ultra2 SCSI | 9005H / 0010H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AIC-7896/7 Ultra2 SCSI | 9005H / 005FH | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-3940U2x | 9005H / 0050H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AHA-3950U2D Ultra2 SCSI | 9005H / 0051H | Recognized / Not Tested |
| AIC-7880P Ultra/Ultra Wide SCSI | 9004H / 8078H | Tested |
| AHA-2940U/UW Ultra/Ultra Wide SCSI | 9004H / 8178H | Tested |
| AHA-2940U2/W SCSI (AIC-7890) | 9005H / 001FH | Tested |
| AIC-7861 AHA-2940AU SCSI Controller | 9004H / 6178H | Problems - BIOS maybe |
(1): one problem reported, card hangs while booting (as soon as interrupts are switched on, scsi selection time-out interrupts are raised, and the interrupt cannot be cleared or is set again by the card)
| Controller | Vendor / Device | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 53C810 8100S Fast-SCSI Adapter | 1000H / 0001H | |
| 53C820 820 Fast-Wide-SCSI Adapter | 1000H / 0002H | |
| 53C825 825XS/D Fast-Wide-SCSI Adapter | 1000H / 0003H | |
| 53C815 815X Fast-SCSI Adapter | 1000H / 0004H | |
| 53C875 8100ASP, 2081X Ultra-Wide-SCSI Adapter | 1000H / 0005H | |
| 53C860 8600SP Ultra-SCSI Adapter | 1000H / 0006H | |
| 53C875 875XS/D, 2280X Ultra-Wide-SCSI Adapter | 1000H / 000FH |
The documentation for programming the 53C8xx chip is found at http://www.lsilogic.com/techlib/ [expired].
Example: The add-on ASUS PCI-SC200 SCSI controller is based on the NCR/Symbios 53C810 chip.
Cfr. Display support
VESA and PCITools.Scan information contains detailed information on the video modes of some of the video subsystems listed below.
| Manufacturer | Controller / Chip set | Bus | Vendor / Device | Drivers tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATI Technologies Inc. | Xpert98 AGP 2X / Chip: Mach64: Rage 3D Pro | AGP 2x | 1002H / 4742H | Vesa 2.0 |
| 3D Rage II+ | PCI | Mach64 / Vesa 2.0 | ||
| Mobility M3 | AGP 2x | 1002H / 4C46 | VGA / Mach64 / Vesa 2.0 | |
| 3D Rage P/M Mobility | AGP 2x | 1002H / 4C4D | VGA (640x480x8) / Mach64 (1280x1024x32) / Vesa 2.0 (1280x1024x24) | |
| Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. | Riva TnT 128 [NV04] | PCI | 10DEH / 0020H | Vesa 3.0 |
| FireGL 1000 | PCI | 3Dlabs Permedia 2 | ||
| 3Dlabs | TVP4020 Permedia 2 - Texas Instruments | AGP 1x | 104CH / 3D07H | 3Dlabs Permedia 2 |
| S3 Inc. | Trio32/64/64V+ / Chip: 86C764/765 | PCI | 5333H / 8811H | S3 Trio64 |
| ViRGE/DX or /GX / Chip: 86C375 | PCI | 5333H / 8A01H | S3 Trio64 | |
| Aurora64V+ on-board Compaq | PCI | S3 Aurora64 | ||
| Matrox Graphics, Inc. | Power Graphics Accelerator, MGA Series, VGA/VBE BIOS V2.5 | PCI | Vesa 2.0 | |
| MGA 2164W [Millenium II] 16MB | PCI | 102BH / 051BH | Vesa 2.0 | |
| NeoMagic | MagicGraph 128XD on IBM ThinkPad 380XD | PCI | Vesa 2.0 | |
| IBM ThinkPad 380 | PCI | Vesa 2.0 | ||
| PowerColor | Goya S3 325 Virge DX - PCI | PCI | Vesa 2.0 | |
| Silicon Motion | LynxEM+ - 4MB | PCI | Vesa 3 | |
| STB now nVIDIA | PowerGraph 64 Video (Trio64V+) | PCI | S3 Trio64 | |
| Trident | Cyber 9385 on IBM Thinkpad 760ED | PCI | Trident 9xxx |
The drivers are listed with the name they are given in Oberon.Text, which is edited from the [Configure] button in System3.Tool.
| EtherLink III for ISA/EISA - 3C509B |
| Supports the 3CxxxB boards of the next driver Net3Com90x which is more generic |
| Controller | Vendor / Device | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 3C900-TPO Fast Ethernet | 10B7H / 9000H | |
| 3C900-Combo Fast Etherlink | 10B7H / 9001H | |
| 3C900B-TPO Etherlink XL TPO 10Mb | 10B7H / 9004H | |
| 3C900B-Combo Etherlink XL Combo | 10B7H / 9005H | |
| 3C905-TX Fast Etherlink 10/100 | 10B7H / 9050H | |
| 3C905B Fast Etherlink XL 10/100 | 10B7H / 9055H | Tested |
| 3C905B - 10/100Mb T4 | 10B7H / 9056H | |
| 3C905C-TX Fast Etherlink | 10B7H / 9200H | Tested |
| 3C556 laptop tornado | 10B7H / 6055H | Testing on version 0.9.5 |
| Controller | Vendor / Device | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Winbond 89C940 | 1050H / 0940H | |
| Winbond | 1050H / 5A5AH | |
| SureCom NE34 | 10BDH / 0E34H | |
| RealTek RTL-8029 | 10ECH / 8029H | |
| Via 86C926 | 1106H / 0926H | |
| Compex RL2000 | 11F6H / 1401H | |
| Holtek HT80232 | 12C3H / 0058H | |
| Holtek HT80229 | 12C3H / 5598H | |
| NetVin NV5000SC | 4A14H / 5000H | |
| KTI ET32P2 | 8E2EH / 3000H |
Only modems with a serial (V24/RS232) port interface are supported. Modems of the type "WinModem" have a proprietary interface to the operating system driver. Normally, they work only with Windows.
The safest is to buy an external modem with a serial interface, that understands the "AT" command set. Spending a bit more for a good modem (e.g. a 3COM US Robotics) is also worth it, because you will get better connections.
No support yet.
Cfr. Mouse support
Examples of mice known to work (Mouse type is described in "Mouse support"):
| Manufacturer | Description | Mouse Type |
|---|---|---|
| Logitech | PS/2-style on mouse port, e.g. Compaq trackball, | PS2 |
| WingMan Gaming Mouse, | ||
| MouseMan Wheel Mouse, | ||
| Pilot Optical Mouse - 3-buttons | ||
| Logitech type 1 on COM 1/2 | LM1 | |
| Logitech type 2 on COM 1/2 | LM2 | |
| Logitech type 3 on COM 1/2 | LM3 | |
| new Logitech on COM 1/2, e.g. Pilot+ and MouseMan wheel | MSI | |
| Microsoft | IntelliMouse | MSI |
| Mouse Systems | Mouse Systems type 1 on COM 1/2, e.g. Optical - Serial - 3-button | MS1 |
| Mouse Systems type 2 on COM 1/2 | MS2 | |
| Mouse Systems type 3 on COM 1/2 | MS3 | |
| Mouse Systems type 4 on COM 1/2 | MS4 | |
| Microsoft | Microsoft 2-button on COM 1/2 | MSM |
Cfr. Sound support
Cfr. USB support
Chip sets compatible with the Universal Host Controller Interface (UHCI) 1.1 are supported, e.g. VIA's T83C572. OHCI is being investigated.
| Manufacturer | Controller / Chip set | Vendor / Device |
|---|---|---|
| Intel Corporation | 82371AB/EB PIIX4 USB | 8086H / 7112H |
| Manufacturer | Description | Disk driver |
|---|---|---|
| Acer | Acer Entra | Standard ATA/EIDE |
| Dell | Dimension XPS R400 (PSH98) | |
| 433/L and 466/L | ||
| OptiPlex GXM and Optiplex GXpro | ||
| Precision 410 with on-board AIC7880 & AIC7890 Ultra-2 SCSI and IDE controller | Adaptec AIC7xxx and Standard ATA/EIDE | |
| Inspiron 7500 | Standard ATA/EIDE | |
| Dell Latitude C600 Laptop | ||
| IBM | Thinkpad 760ED | |
| w:Compaq | Armada 7700 Series - Pentium MMX 166 Mhz | |
| Intel | 486DX-33, Symphony chipset, AM BIOS | |
| Generic PC/104 | 8 MB flash memory on embedded system Custom boot loader
|
The alpha version is working on:
| Manufacturer | Description | Display controller |
|---|---|---|
| HP | Vectra VL series 3 5/75 and 5/90 Omnibook XE2 (DC Series) | Cirrus Logic 543x on embedded VGA Silicon Motion SMI LynxEM - 4MB |
4 Aug 2002 - Copyright © 2002 ETH Zürich. All rights reserved.
E-Mail: oberon-web at inf.ethz.ch
Homepage: http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch