CPU, Main Boards, and Video Support
Debian on &arch-title; currently supports three subarchitectures:
DECstation: various models of the DECstation are supported.
Cobalt Microserver: only MIPS based Cobalt machines are covered here.
This included the Cobalt Qube, RaQ, Qube2 and RaQ2, and the Gateway
Microserver.
Broadcom BCM91250A (SWARM): this is an ATX form factor evaluation board from
Broadcom based on their SiByte processor family.
Complete information regarding supported mips/mipsel machines can be found
at the Linux-MIPS homepage. In the
following, only the systems supported by the Debian installer will be
covered. If you are looking for support for other subarchitectures, please
contact the
debian-&architecture; mailing list.
CPU/Machine types
Currently only DECstations with R3000 and R4000/R4400 CPUs are
supported by the Debian installation system on little endian MIPS.
The Debian installation system works on the following machines:
System TypeCPUCode-name
Debian subarchitecture
DECstation 5000/1xx
R3000
3MIN
r3k-kn02
DECstation 5000/150
R4000
3MIN
r4k-kn04
DECstation 5000/200
R3000
3MAX
r3k-kn02
DECstation 5000/240
R3000
3MAX+
r3k-kn02
DECstation 5000/260
R4400
3MAX+
r4k-kn04
Personal DECstation 5000/xx
R3000
Maxine
r3k-kn02
Personal DECstation 5000/50
R4000
Maxine
r4k-kn04
All Cobalt machines are supported which have a serial console (which is
needed for the installation).
The Broadcom BCM91250A evaluation board comes with an SB1250 chip with two
SB-1 cores which are supported in SMP mode by this installer.
Supported console options
Serial console is available on all supported DECstations (9600 bps,
8N1). For using serial console, you have to boot the installer image
with the console=ttySx kernel
parameter (with x being the number
of the serial port you have your terminal connected to — usually
2, but 0 for the Personal DECstations).
On 3MIN and 3MAX+ (DECstation 5000/1xx, 5000/240 and 5000/260) local console
is available with the PMAG-BA and the PMAGB-B graphics options.
If you have a Linux system to use as serial terminal, an easy way
is to run cu
In Woody this command was part of the uucp package,
but in later releases it is available as a separate package.
on it. Example:
$ cu -l /dev/ttyS1 -s 9600
where the option -l (line) sets the serial port to use
and -s (speed) sets the speed for the connection (9600
bits per second).
Both Cobalt and Broadcom BCM91250A use 115200 bps.