This section describes the hardware supported on the Sun3 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 autoconfiguration time it is not accessible at any time afterwards. To enable a device which did not autoconfigure, the system must be rebooted.
The autoconfiguration system is described in
autoconf(4). A list of the supported devices is given below.