INTRO(4)              OpenBSD Programmer's Manual (i386)              INTRO(4)

NAME
     intro - introduction to special files and hardware support

DESCRIPTION
     The manual pages in section 4 describe the special files, related driver
     functions, and networking support available in the system.  In this part
     of the manual, the SYNOPSIS section of each configurable device gives a
     sample specification for use in constructing a system description for the
     config(8) program.  The DIAGNOSTICS section lists messages which may ap-
     pear on the console and/or in the system error log /var/log/messages due
     to errors in device operation; see syslogd(8) for more information.

     This section contains both devices which may be configured into the sys-
     tem and network related information.  The networking support is intro-
     duced in netintro(4).

DEVICE SUPPORT
     This section describes the hardware supported on the i386 (PC-clone)
     platform.  Software support for these devices comes in two forms.  A
     hardware device may be supported with a character or block device driver,
     or it may be used within the networking subsystem and have a network
     interface driver.  Block and character devices are accessed through files
     in the file system of a special type; see mknod(8).  Network interfaces
     are indirectly accessed through the interprocess communication facilities
     provided by the system; see socket(2).

     A hardware device is identified to the system at configuration time and
     the appropriate device or network interface driver is then compiled into
     the system.  When the resultant system is booted, the autoconfiguration
     facilities in the system probe for the device and, if found, enable the
     software support for it.  If a device does not respond at autoconfigura-
     tion time it is not accessible at any time afterwards.  To enable a de-
     vice which did not autoconfigure, the system will have to be rebooted.

     The autoconfiguration system is described in autoconf(4).

LIST OF DEVICES
     A complete list of available devices is contained within the pages de-
     scribing the system buses and controllers.  For example, a PCI device
     would be listed in the pci(4) man page.  The following buses and con-
     trollers list these devices:

        cardbus(4)    introduction to CardBus support
        eisa(4)       introduction to EISA bus support
        iic(4)        Inter IC (I2C) bus
        isa(4)        introduction to ISA bus support
        isapnp(4)     introduction to ISA Plug-and-Play support
        onewire(4)    1-Wire bus
        pci(4)        introduction to PCI bus support
        pcmcia(4)     introduction to PCMCIA (PC Card) support
        usb(4)        introduction to Universal Serial Bus support

SEE ALSO
     autoconf(4), cpu(4), config(8)

HISTORY
     The i386 intro first appeared in NetBSD 1.0.

OpenBSD 4.2                     October 9, 2007                              1