Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 3/6] target-alpha: Reduce internal processor registers for user-mode.

[Tristan Gingold]

On Jan 6, 2010, at 6:04 PM, Andreas Färber wrote:

> 
> Am 06.01.2010 um 17:29 schrieb Richard Henderson:
> 
>> since (1) ROMs other than the few supported by MILO are probably not 
>> redistributable
> 
> Tristan's trick here was to provide a way for the user to extract a 
> non-distributable ROM. I fear the controversy of whether this should be in 
> qemu-system-alpha or not kept the patch series from being committed.

No.  This point was not discussed.  It is always possible to use another ROM.
I didn't continue this work because I hadn't had the time.

The ROM is indeed an issue.  MILO is a possible solution, but is not available 
on 21264 and can only boot
linux.  I am not even sure it is still supported.
As I was mostly interested in Tru64 and VMS, I took the SRM way.  Note that a 
SRM rescue files are
available from hp.com site (which doesn't mean it is legal) and was already 
used in another es40 free
emulator.

I really don't plan to write a ROM for Alpha!

Although for performance it can make sense to emulate PAL when the OS is 
running.

>> I would be delighted to see your es40 patches...
> 
> v4: http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-03/msg01541.html
> 
> See also http://repo.or.cz/w/qemu/es40.git
> 
> Since that series added devices necessary for system emulation I assume that 
> parts of it need to be converted to the new qdev infrastructure.

Right.  This is not very recent.
IIRC, I could reach a bash prompt, but I don't remember which kernel (2.2 or 
2.6) I use.
SRM was working, as well as AlphaBIOS.
VMS bootloader crash very early.  Maybe your alpha cpu fix could improve the 
situation.
Tru64 crashed during boot.  IOTLB was not supported in qemu.
Windows crashed during boot too.

Tristan.