powerpc [FreeBSD WIKI]

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POWER on FreeBSD has been supported for quite some time. Support for Apple, Freescale, and Sony hardware is considered mature. Support for IBM, Raptor, and Tyan hardware is stable but being actively worked on.

The official project page at http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html is known to be stale as of 20190705.

if you're adding relevant information here, please poke someone to update its source document at ppc.xml.

Listed in alphabetical order by manufacturer.

Apple
- PowerPC ('New World') machines (ones with built-in USB ports, 1999-2006)
Freescale
- MPC85XX evaluation boards, AmigaOne X5000, AmigaOne A1222 (powerpcspe)
IBM
- Open Firmware-based Power5 machines and succesors (including 9133), powerpc64 only
Sony
- Playstation 3 (powerpc64 only, starting with FreeBSD 9.0)
Raptor Computing Systems
- Raptor Blackbird and Talos II Power9-based systems, powerpc64 only
Tyan
- Tyan GN70-BP010 Power8

Raptor and Tyan machines:
- Install the FreeBSD ISO via USB. Don't use the .iso image.
- FreeBSD 12 is mandatory; FreeBSD-CURRENT is recommended for Blackbird. See OS version notes for more information.
- When installing from USB on a Raptor machine, you may encounter a USB bug that prevents the installer root from being mounted. To work around this bug, wait at the mountroot> prompt until you see some probe related errors appear on the screen. This may take a minute to appear. Your USB drive should then attach and be usable. (type cd9660:/dev/iso9660/13_0_CURRENT_POWERPC64_CD after you see it attach on the console to retry the mount and continue with the installer.)
  - This only ever seems to happen during initial boot. Plug and play of additional devices works fine after that point.
Apple machines:
- Starting with 9.0, the installer works properly, and most of the following instructions can be ignored:
- Pre 9.0: http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/ppcinstall.txt
- Sometimes you need these hints:
  - Booting from hard drive: boot cd:,\BOOT\LOADER cd:0
  - PXEbooting: boot enet:0,\\loader.ppc
- Booting alternative kernels easily from loader:
  - Edit /boot/defaults/loader.conf and uncomment the loader_delay="3" line.
  - Reboot and press Ctrl-C during the delay after loader starts. (quick series of dots)
  - set bootfile=/boot/path/to/kernel
  - boot
- Quirks with specific firmware revisions:
  - Apple PowerBook6,5 4.8.7f1 BootROM:
    - Due to failure to clean up the MMU during initialization of OpenFirmware, the page at 0x00100000 is left mapped. This interferes with kernel loading.
    - Workaround: dev /memory@0 100000 1000 do-unmap
U-boot installs: UBoot-Install

See ports for the overview of ports built via gcc (the default).

X11 on Power8/Power9 is still a work in progress.

However, xorg should work on all supported Apple hardware. Console restore after leaving X11 may or may not work, depending on your graphics hardware.

Peter Grehan tested X11 on: *rev B iMac (Rage 3D Pro 215GP, accel disabled). *700Mhz eMac (Nvidia GeForce2 MX) *12“ 1.33G G4 powerbook (Nvidia GeForce G5200) *and Martin Minkus has run it on a 350MHz iMac, Rage 128VR.

On ATI Radeon-based machines there are still some problems: