FreeBSD is a freely available, full source 4.3 (+4.4 enhancements) BSD
release for Intel i386/i486 (or compatable) based PC's. It is based
heavily on Bill Jolitz's 386BSD 0.1, with additions from "the patchkit",
NetBSD, CSRG, and the Free Software Foundation.
Many hundreds of bugs from the 386BSD 0.1 distribution were fixed,
and many out-of-date pieces of software were upgraded to their current
releases in the GAMMA distribution. This 1.0 distribution fixes
many of the first-run problems our GAMMA and EPSILON users reported back
Additionally, many packages such as XFree86 1.3, xview 3.2, elm, nntp,
mh and dozens of other miscellaneous utilities have been ported and
are now available as add-ons. See then next section of this document
For a list of contributors, please see the file "CONTRIB.FreeBSD",
which should be bundled with your distribution.
The core of FreeBSD does not contain DES code which would inhibit its
being exported outside the United States. There is an add-on package
to the core distribution, for use only in the United States, that
contains the programs that normally use DES. The auxilliary packages
provided separately can be used by anyone. Work is in progress to
provide a freely (from outside the U.S.) exportable European distribution
of DES for our non U.S. users.
2. Supported Configurations
---------------------------
FreeBSD currently runs on a wide variety of ISA and EISA bus based
PC's, ranging from 386sx to 486 class machines (though the 386sx is
not recommended). Support for generic IDE or ESDI drive configurations,
various SCSI controller, network and serial cards is also provided.
Following is a list of all currently known disk controllers and
ethernet cards known to work with FreeBSD. Other configurations may
very well work, and we have simply not received any indication of
WD1003 (any generic MFM/RLL)
WD1007 (any generic IDE/ESDI)
Adaptec 154x series ISA SCSI controller (as long as you have less than
Adaptec 174x series EISA SCSI controller in standard and enhanced mode.
Buslogic 445S VLB SCSI controller
DTC 3290 EISA SCSI controller in 1542 emulation mode (as long as
you have less than 16MB of main memory).
With all supported SCSI controllers, full support is provided for
SCSI-I & SCSI-II peripherals, including Disks, tape drives (including
DAT) and CD ROM drives. Note: This and the mcd driver (Mitsumi CDROM
inteface card) is the only way a CD ROM drive may be currently
attached to a FreeBSD system; we do not support SoundBlaster CDROM
interface, or other "mini SCSI" adapters.
The limitation some controllers have with >16MB of memory (as noted)
is due to the fact that the ISA bus only has a DMA address space of 24 bits.
If you do your arithmetic, you'll see that this makes it impossible to do
direct DMA to any address >16MB. This limitation is even true of some
EISA controllers (which are normally 32 bit) when they're configured to
emulate an ISA card, which they then do in *all* respects. This problem
is avoided entirely by IDE controllers (which do not use DMA), true EISA
controllers (like the UltraStor or Adaptec 1742A) or VLB (local bus)
SMC Elite 16 WD8013 ethernet interface, and most other WD8003E,
WD8003EBT, WD8003S, WD8003SBT and WD8013EBT based clones.
Isolan AT 4141-0 (16 bit)
Novell NE1000 and NE2000 ethernet interface.
Various 2 and 4 port serial/parallel cards.
Simple (AST-like) multiport serial cards.
Mitsumi CDROM interface and drive.
Adlib, Soundblaster, Soundblaster Pro, ProAudioSpectrum, Gravis UltraSound
and Roland MPU-401 sound cards.
FreeBSD currently does NOT support IBM's microchannel (MCA) bus, but
support is apparently close to materializing. Details will be posted
You may obtain FreeBSD in a variety of ways:
You can ftp FreeBSD and any or all of its optional packages from
`freebsd.cdrom.com' - the offical FreeBSD release site.
The FreeBSD software is being mirrored at the following locations:
======= =====================================================
Austria ftp.tu-graz.ac.at:/pub/FreeBSD
Germany ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de:pub/comp/os/bsd/FreeBSD
Germany ftp.uni-duisburg.de:/pub/unix/FreeBSD
Hong Kong ftp.cs.cuhk.hk:/pub/FreeBSD
The Netherlands ftp.nl.net:/pub/os/FreeBSD
United Kingdom src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/packages/FreeBSD
U.S.A. ftp.dsu.edu:/pub/FreeBSD
If you do not have access to the internet and electronic mail is your
only recourse, then you may still fetch the files by sending mail to
`ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com' - putting the keyword "help" in your message
to get more information on how to fetch files from freebsd.cdrom.com.
Note: This approach will end up sending many *tens of megabytes*
through the mail, and should only be employed as an absolute LAST
FreeBSD may be ordered on CDROM from:
1-800-786-9907, +1-510-674-0783, +1-510-674-0821 (fax)
Or via the internet from orders@cdrom.com. There current catalog can
be obtained via ftp as ftp.cdrom.com:/cdrom/catalog.
Cost is $39.95. Shipping (per order not per disc) is $5 in the US, Canada,
or Mexico and $10.00 overseas. They accept Visa, Mastercard, American
Express, and ship COD to the United States. California residents please
Should you be dissatisfied for any reason, the CD comes with an
unconditional return policy.
Note that Walnut Creek CDROM does NOT provide technical support for FreeBSD,
you need to contact the FreeBSD team for that. Please see section 4 for
It should be noted, lest you get the wrong impression that "FreeBSD"
is anything but, that almost no one in the "core team" makes money
from distributions or anything else connected with FreeBSD. We simply
provide this information as a public service for those wishing to get
their releases from somewhere other than the net (and the easier it
is for you to obtain our software, the happier we are).
4. Reporting problems, making suggestions, submitting code.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Your suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are always
valued - please do not hesitate to report any problems you may find
(preferably with a fix attached if you can!).
The prefered method to submit bug reports from a machine with internet
mail connectivity is to use the sendbug command. Bug reports will be
dutifully filed by our faithful bugfiler program and you can be sure
that we'll do our best to respond to all reported bugs as soon as
If, for some reason, you are unable to use the sendbug command to
submit a bug report, you can try to send it to:
FreeBSD-bugs@freefall.cdrom.com
Otherwise, for any questions or suggestions, please send mail to:
FreeBSD-questions@freefall.cdrom.com
Additionally, being a volunteer effort, we are always happy to have
extra hands willing to help - there are already far more enhancements
to be done than we can ever manage to do by ourselves! To contact us
on technical matters, or with offers of help, you may send mail to:
FreeBSD-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com
Since these mailing lists can experience significant amounts of
traffic, if you've got slow or expensive mail access and you're
only interested in keeping up with significant FreeBSD events, you may
find it preferable to subscribe to:
FreeBSD-announce@freefall.cdrom.com
All but the FreeBSD-bugs groups can be freely joined by anyone wishing to
do so. Send mail to MajorDomo@freefall.cdrom.com and include the keyword
`help' on a line by itself somewhere in the body of the message. This
will give you more information on joining the various lists, accessing
FreeBSD represents the cumulative work of many dozens, if not
hundreds, of individuals from around the world who have worked very
hard to bring you this release. It would be very difficult, if not
impossible, to enumerate everyone who's contributed to FreeBSD, but
nonetheless we shall try (in alphabetical order, of course). If your
name is not mentioned, please be assured that its omission is entirely
The Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), U.C. Berkeley.
Bill Jolitz, for his extensive work with 386BSD.
The FreeBSD "core" group:
Robert Bruce and Jack Velte of Walnut Creek CDROM, without
whose help (and continuing support) this release would never
Dermot McDonnell for his donation of a Toshiba XM3401B CDROM
The NetBSD group for their frequent assistance and commentary.
Additional FreeBSD helpers and beta testers:
Gary Browing Jon Cargille
J.T. Conklin Chris Demetriou
Julian Elischer Bruce Evans
Sean Eric Fagan Guy Helmer
Jaye Mathisen L Jonas Olsson
Chris Provenzano Dave Rivers
Guido van Rooij Steven Wallace
Rick Weldon Terry Williams
And everyone at Montana State University for their initial support.
Thanks to everyone, especially those not mentioned, and we sincerely
hope you enjoy this release of FreeBSD!
$Id: RELNOTES.FreeBSD,v 1.21 1994/02/01 03:51:28 ache Exp $
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