Re: [Qemu-devel] Open Hack'Ware 0.4 release candidate

[Natalia Portillo]

Hi!


> > > > What you say about the BeOS:
> > > >
> > > > The BeOS kernel isn't in the ISO part of the CD-ROM, but in the Big
> > > > Endian BeFS part of it.
> > >
> > > I did not say the kernel was in the El-Torito image.
> > > I just said the CDROMs I got contain ISO filesystems.
> > It should have three tracks, one in HFS/ISO with El-Torito, one in
> > little endian BeFS (BeOS/x86) and one in big endian BeFS (BeOS/PPC),
> > if not, the CD is incorrect.
>
> Seems that it depends on which CDROMs. I have some BeOS ones that 
> really
> don't look this way.
Ok but surely they are x86 only

> Right. The El-torito image I checked is for x86.
>
> > > > For getting BeOS compatibility there are two ways:
> > > > First of all, emulate a BeBox. This shouldn't be a very hard way, as
> > > > the BeBox is simply a PReP machine with a lot of chips (SCSI, UARTs,
> > > > etc) and with an specific BIOS (I think, not similar to OpenFirmware
> > > > at
> > > > any point).
> > > > Second of all, see how the BeOS Loader loads the kernel in a MacOS.
> > > > The
> > > > loader don't like at all the software ROM, and probably ignores
> > > > totally
> > > > OpenFirmware and relies to ToolBox to get loaded and then do 
> > > > hardware
> > > > probes (it does directly SCSI commands to load the system on a real
> > > > Macintosh.)
> > >
> > > For now, I'm not in a hurry to see BeOS booting...
> > > I just made a try and saw that it failed. Moreover, I think it would
> > > only boot on OldWorld Macs, that are not supported in qemu.
> > Yes, it will only boot on OldWorld, but also on BeBox (that are PReP
> > machines).
> > There is one person interested on emulating a BeBox.
> > Do you think will be easy to add BeFS support to OHW using OpenBeOS or
> > Linux's BeFS code?
>
> It seems BeFS is not well documented. There was a BeFS project for 
> Linux
> but it seems that it has been stopped (no activity for a few years) and
> was never integrated into standard kernels.
> If BeBox is just a PREP machine, the first step to emulate it would be
> to try to boot the BeOS kernel using Qemu PREP target with -kernel
> argument.
> Then, we may don't need any BeFS emulation to start it.
Uh, as far as I know the BeFS filesystem for Linux is in the kernel ^o)
You can download a fully explanation of the BeFS from Dominic 
Giampaolo's webpage (the designer of BeFS).
Also the OpenBeOS project has a working filesystem driver (at least 
readonly)

Without that in OHW or a BeOS/PPC compatible machine I'm not able to 
extract the kernel (the drivers I said are for little endian BeFS and 
not for big endian one)

> > I think NT should boot with only the support for the executable 
> > format,
> > at least to a point that shows anything interesting on screen (surely 
> > a
> > big blue screen of death xD).
>
> Well, I'd have to merge the code I got for NT XCOFF loading, then and
> retry...
Say me

> > MorphOS SHOULD work if we mix the qemu's PC emulation with OHW and
> > PowerPC cpu, as Pegasos is a standard PC motherboard with an OF clone
> > and a PowerPC G3/G4 chip.
>
> Then, it's exactly what a PREP board is...
> So, a few modifications from PREP target (mostly base addresses, I
> guess) should be OK.
The qemu prep emulation currently emulates the serial controller?
Remember that we debugged the mos kernel and find that it was trying to 
access a non implemented command in the rs232 controller