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

[J. Mayer]

On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 23:43 +0000, Natalia Portillo wrote:
> Hi!

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.

> >> The BeBox firmware understand this system and loads the PEFF kernel as
> >> I commented you a time ago.
> >> The BeOS Loader for MacOS seems to load the kernel from the BeFS also
> >> and then let control to it removing MacOS from memory.
> >
> > I though I remembered booting directly BeOS CDROM on a Mac, but I may 
> > be
> > wrong on this point...
> I don't think you got that, as the zbeos in the ISO/HFS partition seems 
> to be a x86 executable (I should see this in more detail), and OF 
> doesn't recognize BeFS.

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.

> >> About Windows NT did you get the kernel to load?
> >> I have also 3.5 and 3.51 so I can help you also in this.
> >>
> >> About Pegasos and MorphOS did you pass ago the UART check we had
> >> problems before?
[...]
> 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...

> 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.

[...]

-- 
J. Mayer <address@hidden>
Never organized