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Plan 9 - PC Hardware Requirements
   
Supported PC Hardware

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.

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.

IDE/ATAPI DISKS

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).

  • PC-Tech RZ1000
  • Promise PDC20262
  • CMD 640B
  • CMD 646
  • VIA 82C686
  • ServerWorks IB6566
  • Intel 82371FB (PIIX)
  • Intel 82371SB (PIIX3)
  • Intel 82371AB (PIIX4)
  • Intel 82371EB (PIIX4E)
  • whatever the IBM Thinkpad T23 uses

SCSI

  • Mylex Multimaster (old Buslogic BT-*) adapter
  • Symbios 53C8XX adapter

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.

ETHERNET

  • 3Com Etherlink III, PCMCIA (3C589), Fast Etherlink, and Fast Etherlink XL adapters
  • Intel i82557, i82558, i82559 Fast Ethernet PCI LAN controller (e.g., the Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B)
  • Digital (now Intel) 21114x PCI Fast Ethernet controller (e.g., Digital DE-500). Some PNIC and PNIC2-based cards may also work with this driver. The Netgear FA310 works.
  • National Semiconductor 83815 Fast Ethernet controller. Drives the Netgear FA311 and FA312.
  • RealTek 8139 Ethernet controller; usually bundled into low-end systems. (not detected on some (read: my) systems)
  • RealTek 8029 PCI; set up as type=NE2000.
  • Netgear GA620 and GA620T Gigabit Ethernet cards and other cards using the Alteon Acenic chip, e.g., Alteon Acenic fiber and copper cards, DEC DEGPA-SA and SGI Acenic
  • AMD 79C970 PCnet PCI Ethernet controller (e.g., VMware)
  • National Semiconductor NE2000 or compatible adapter
  • Lucent Wavelan PCMCIA wireless ethernet adapter (including Dell TrueMobile 1150)
  • Intersil Prism-based wireless ethernet adapter (including Linksys Instant Wireless PC card)

These cards are supported but not as well used:

  • Western Digital WD8003
  • Western Digital WD8013
  • SMC Elite and Elite Ultra
  • Linksys Combo EthernetCard and EtherFast 10/100
  • Accton EtherPair-PCMCIA
  • Netgear FA410TX

Only some of these have bootstrap drivers or file server drivers, but they should all work on terminals and CPU servers.

VGA CARDS AND CHIPSETS

For VGA cards more than any other hardware, it is more precise to describe the chips we support rather than the cards they are based on, since the cards are more ephemeral than the chip sets. Beware: different revisions of a card may use different chip sets.

Linux users can look at their X server configuration to see which chip set they are using. Windows users can look at ``control panel'' -> ``display settings'' -> ``display type'' to find out.

Plan 9 uses some basic accelerator for features such as filling and scrolling rectangles. We use none of the 3D features on the cards we support.

Chipsets tested with the current release:

  • ATI Mach64xx
  • Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x, CL-GD543x, CL-GD544x, CL-GD546x Laguna
  • CHIPS hiQVideo (65550, 65554, 69000)
  • Neomagic MagicGraph
  • S3 Savage4, Savage IX/MV, SuperSavage IXC/16
  • S3 ViRGE DX, GX, GX2, MX, VX
  • 3Dfx Voodoo 3 1000, 2000, and 3000
  • Nvidia TNT
  • Matrox G400
  • Trident Cyber938x
  • VMware virtual chipset

Chipsets supported in previous releases but not tested in current system:

  • ARK 2000pv
  • ATI Mach 32
  • S3 801, 805, 864, 928
  • Tseng ET4000

Chipsets NOT supported (anything not listed above is not likely to work; this section lists those commonly asked about):

  • The ATI Rage 128 is sufficiently different from the Mach 64 that aux/vga doesn't handle them.
  • Some newer ATI Mach64 chips don't work (notably the one on the later ATI xpert series)
  • nVidia GeForce (In linux this works on the RivaFB driver, as is the TNT2, apparently they are not similar enough)
  • Voodoo Banshee (apparently not similar enough to the Voodoo 3

Cards tested with the current release:

  • #9 Revolution IV
  • ATI Mach64xx series
  • Diamond Stealth III S540
  • Trident Cyber938x series
  • Matrox Millennium II

Cards supported in the third edition but not tested in current system:

  • ATI Graphics Xpression
  • ATI Rage II PCI
  • ATI Xpert 98
  • ATI xpert@work
  • ATI Xpert LCD
  • #9FX Reality 334, Motion 771
  • Diamond Stealth3D 2000 vers 1.04
  • Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001
  • Diamond SpeedStar 64
  • Matrox Millennium, G200, G400

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
  • Trio64V+
  • Various Rackmount SBCs

AUDIO

Supported audio devices:

  • Sound Blaster 16 or later, ISA card
  • ESS 1688 running in 8-bit SBPro mode
  • most USB audio devices

Supported but not as well used:

  • Any Sound Blaster 16 clones (NOT Sound Blaster Pro clones)

KEYBOARDS

Any PS/2 keyboard should work.

MICE

Plan 9 supports PS/2, PS/2 Intellimouse, and serial mice.

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 machines. The problem also exists in Mandrake Linux, so it's likely not Plan 9's fault. VMware has been notified.

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:

  • Dell Inspiron 7000
  • IBM Thinkpad 560, 560E, X20, T23
  • NEC Versa LX, SX
  • Toshiba Portege 3440CT

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, 600E, T21
  • 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)
  • Dell Inspiron 4000, 5000e (unsupported video card ATI Mobility M3)
  • Zenith Znote 425 (not enough RAM)