[Qemu-devel] AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU

[Qemu-devel] AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU

[Alpha Mule]

Hi. AmigaOS 4.x runs natively on some niche PowerPC boards. I was
wondering about the viability of running AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU.

Specifically, I was wondering if there has been any development on
that and/or what needs to be done to get it fully working.

Any information would be appreciated. Thanks.

Re: [Qemu-devel] AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU

[BALATON Zoltan]

On Sun, 12 Jan 2014, Alpha Mule wrote:
> Hi. AmigaOS 4.x runs natively on some niche PowerPC boards. I was
> wondering about the viability of running AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU.
>
> Specifically, I was wondering if there has been any development on
> that and/or what needs to be done to get it fully working.
>
> Any information would be appreciated. Thanks.

Looks like not much info is available on this... I think that the first 
difficulty is that AmigaOS 4.x is not freely available (AFAIK) so it's 
hard to do any testing with it.

I've found that a demo version of MorphOS (which is not the same but runs 
on similar hardware) is available and runs on some Mac hardware that may 
be closer to what qemu already has support for so it may be an easier 
target to test.

I've tried to boot it on qemu but haven't got very far and I think qemu is 
missing some features MorphOS needs so it may not be easy to make it work. 
Here's what I've found:

1. The CPU type MorphOS seems to prefer is G4 7447A. This CPU type may not 
be fully supported by qemu yet and specifying it with -cpu makes the VM 
hang in the openbios firmware before it even gets to boot the OS. By using 
the default G4 CPU without any -cpu option it gets further and hangs later 
in the OS's boot loader.

2. None of the video cards MorphOS can work with is emulated by qemu and I 
think those qemu has do not work with MorphOS. So even if it was running 
otherwise there would be no display. Theoretically this may be got around 
(for testing at least) with the PCI pass-through of an appropriate card 
from the host but I don't have such a video card at hand and don't know if 
this would be possible in practice at all.

3. The farthest I got is with the 'boot cd:,\mac_ppc32\boot.img' command 
line from openbios which seems to at least start to boot but hangs without 
any messages (even on the serial console) quite early and I don't know 
enough to debug this further. All I got was some debug logs which seem to 
go astray around here:

IN:
0x00441b14:  dcbtst  r8,r10
0x00441b18:  stw     r5,4(r10)
0x00441b1c:  stw     r5,8(r10)
0x00441b20:  stw     r5,12(r10)
0x00441b24:  stw     r5,16(r10)
0x00441b28:  stw     r5,20(r10)
0x00441b2c:  stw     r5,24(r10)
0x00441b30:  stw     r5,28(r10)
0x00441b34:  stwu    r5,32(r10)
0x00441b38:  bdnz+   0x441b14

Raise exception at 00441b18 => 00000002 (00)
invalid/unsupported opcode: 00 - 00 - 00 (00000000) 00000080 0
IN:
0x00000034:  addi    r1,r1,16
0x00000038:  lwz     r0,52(r1)
0x0000003c:  mtlr    r0
0x00000040:  lwz     r0,56(r1)
0x00000044:  mtcr    r0

Re: [Qemu-devel] AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU

[François Revol]

On 25/01/2014 01:20, BALATON Zoltan wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Jan 2014, Alpha Mule wrote:
>> Hi. AmigaOS 4.x runs natively on some niche PowerPC boards. I was
>> wondering about the viability of running AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU.
>>
>> Specifically, I was wondering if there has been any development on
>> that and/or what needs to be done to get it fully working.
>>
>> Any information would be appreciated. Thanks.
> 
> Looks like not much info is available on this... I think that the first
> difficulty is that AmigaOS 4.x is not freely available (AFAIK) so it's
> hard to do any testing with it.
> 
> I've found that a demo version of MorphOS (which is not the same but
> runs on similar hardware) is available and runs on some Mac hardware
> that may be closer to what qemu already has support for so it may be an
> easier target to test.

Unlike MorphOS which supports some PPC Mac machines, AmigaOS 4.x only
supports some specific hardwares, AFAIK, like the X-1000 from A-EON, and
the Sam440 and Sam460ex boards from ACube.

I'm currently porting Haiku to the Sam460ex board, so I started adding
support for it to QEMU locally, including enough to get the custom
U-Boot to start, but it's far from finished, U-Boot still fails before
POST (something to do with enumerating RAM).

As for AmigaOS4, it uses a custom stage2 bootloader which requires some
exported functions from the specific U-Boot (why they didn't use and
extend the official U-Boot calls I don't know), so you won't be able to
boot it with -kernel anyway, unlike Haiku which stage2 loader currently
fakes a Linux kernel for non-x86 archs.

I don't know when I'll have time to clean that up and put it online yet.

François.

Re: [Qemu-devel] AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

On 25/01/14 00:20, BALATON Zoltan wrote:

> On Sun, 12 Jan 2014, Alpha Mule wrote:
>> Hi. AmigaOS 4.x runs natively on some niche PowerPC boards. I was
>> wondering about the viability of running AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU.
>>
>> Specifically, I was wondering if there has been any development on
>> that and/or what needs to be done to get it fully working.
>>
>> Any information would be appreciated. Thanks.
>
> Looks like not much info is available on this... I think that the first
> difficulty is that AmigaOS 4.x is not freely available (AFAIK) so it's
> hard to do any testing with it.
>
> I've found that a demo version of MorphOS (which is not the same but
> runs on similar hardware) is available and runs on some Mac hardware
> that may be closer to what qemu already has support for so it may be an
> easier target to test.
>
> I've tried to boot it on qemu but haven't got very far and I think qemu
> is missing some features MorphOS needs so it may not be easy to make it
> work. Here's what I've found:
>
> 1. The CPU type MorphOS seems to prefer is G4 7447A. This CPU type may
> not be fully supported by qemu yet and specifying it with -cpu makes the
> VM hang in the openbios firmware before it even gets to boot the OS. By
> using the default G4 CPU without any -cpu option it gets further and
> hangs later in the OS's boot loader.
>
> 2. None of the video cards MorphOS can work with is emulated by qemu and
> I think those qemu has do not work with MorphOS. So even if it was
> running otherwise there would be no display. Theoretically this may be
> got around (for testing at least) with the PCI pass-through of an
> appropriate card from the host but I don't have such a video card at
> hand and don't know if this would be possible in practice at all.
>
> 3. The farthest I got is with the 'boot cd:,\mac_ppc32\boot.img' command
> line from openbios which seems to at least start to boot but hangs
> without any messages (even on the serial console) quite early and I
> don't know enough to debug this further. All I got was some debug logs
> which seem to go astray around here:
>
> IN:
> 0x00441b14: dcbtst r8,r10
> 0x00441b18: stw r5,4(r10)
> 0x00441b1c: stw r5,8(r10)
> 0x00441b20: stw r5,12(r10)
> 0x00441b24: stw r5,16(r10)
> 0x00441b28: stw r5,20(r10)
> 0x00441b2c: stw r5,24(r10)
> 0x00441b30: stw r5,28(r10)
> 0x00441b34: stwu r5,32(r10)
> 0x00441b38: bdnz+ 0x441b14
>
> Raise exception at 00441b18 => 00000002 (00)
> invalid/unsupported opcode: 00 - 00 - 00 (00000000) 00000080 0
> IN:
> 0x00000034: addi r1,r1,16
> 0x00000038: lwz r0,52(r1)
> 0x0000003c: mtlr r0
> 0x00000040: lwz r0,56(r1)
> 0x00000044: mtcr r0

FWIW I do have a MorphOS image in my OpenBIOS test suite which I run as 
part of the release process from time to time, although of course it 
never seems to get further than the bootloader. Last time I spent some 
time checking this in detail, it seemed to get stuck in an infinite loop 
whilst traversing the firmware tree but it's been a while since I 
started digging any deeper into this.

I did find some of the developers on IRC and asked a few questions about 
this a couple of years ago, however the responses I got back were 
unhelpful and rather immature so I simply gave up.


ATB,

Mark.

Re: [Qemu-devel] AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU

[xalaris]

Running MorphOS has been probably already achieved long ago. Not sure if it's
just rumors, but it has been said that someone from the OS team has managed
to do that. http://bigfoot.morphos-team.net/test/qemu.png
As about cpu variety, Morph has been covered by most of the G4 PowerMacs,
and as far as i know it has lately been tested with G5. On the other hand,
AmigaOS 4 has been partially running on a G4 mini for quite some time, under
the code name Moana. This project has taken involved parties to court, and
has seized.
But it was proof that it was feasible, and minus the peripheral hardware
support (no drivers), it went real fast. I've seen it running, i have to say
i was impressed. Alas, no sound, no USB support -other than mouse/kbrd, no
ethernet, and no booting from hard disk. However, the OS could successfully
be installed on the internal hard disk, and firmware tricked into booting
from the HD thinking it boots from the optical drive!



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Re: [Qemu-devel] AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU

[BALATON Zoltan]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2014, xalaris wrote:
> Running MorphOS has been probably already achieved long ago. Not sure if it's
> just rumors, but it has been said that someone from the OS team has managed
> to do that. http://bigfoot.morphos-team.net/test/qemu.png

But it seems they never relased that and have no plans to do so (I 
understand they have no obligation to share their modifications as long as 
they don't distribute it).

I almost managed to get it to boot in QEMU with some changes in OpenBIOS 
but it seems there are still more bugs to hunt down and then not 
everything needed is in QEMU yet (most importantly supported graphics card 
emulation) so I don't know how far I can get with it but that's what I'd 
like to find out. Even if MorphOS may not be usable at the end it should 
improve OpenBIOS and QEMU's PPC Mac emulation a little.

> As about cpu variety, Morph has been covered by most of the G4 PowerMacs,
> and as far as i know it has lately been tested with G5. On the other hand,
> AmigaOS 4 has been partially running on a G4 mini for quite some time, under
> the code name Moana. This project has taken involved parties to court, and
> has seized.

While technically may be possible, looks like it is not legally possible 
to run AmigaOS on anything else than licensed hardware. (Similar to OS X.) 
I think this is unfortunate as it confines it to a very small niche. Maybe 
they could get a bigger market if potential buyers could try it first 
without much commitment but it's their decision.

Regards,
BALATON Zoltan

Re: [Qemu-devel] AmigaOS 4.x on QEMU

[xalaris]

BALATON Zoltan wrote
> I almost managed to get it to boot in QEMU with some changes in OpenBIOS 
> but it seems there are still more bugs to hunt down and then not 
> everything needed is in QEMU yet (most importantly supported graphics card 
> emulation) so I don't know how far I can get with it but that's what I'd 
> like to find out. Even if MorphOS may not be usable at the end it should 
> improve OpenBIOS and QEMU's PPC Mac emulation a little.

Yes, well, this is a matter which requires a few considerations. You see,
graphics cards on PowerMacs have some differences compared to their
PC-equivalent. They may be of the same make and chipset etc. but they have a
different Rom content. People trying to use regular PC cards on a Macintosh
had to flash their cards' ROM contents, unless the size limited the
operation. In such cases some people actually got to replace the ROM chip
completely. This might mean that if you find yourself a compatible card, you
might still have to flash it. But then again, since MorphOS is a
multi-platform OS, it runs on other mobos, like bPlan's Pegasos 1 and 2, and
the Efika. Those i'm not sure if they require a 'Mac-ROM' card... 
The OS also runs on PPC-equiped classic Amigas. Now, those that are expanded
with something like a Mediator PCI bridgeboard, can use regular Radeons,
Voodoos etc.


BALATON Zoltan wrote
> While technically may be possible, looks like it is not legally possible 
> to run AmigaOS on anything else than licensed hardware. (Similar to OS X.) 
> I think this is unfortunate as it confines it to a very small niche. Maybe 
> they could get a bigger market if potential buyers could try it first 
> without much commitment but it's their decision.

True! Theoritically the 'NG' Amigas have helped widen hardware choices. But
if this is considered a 'hobby OS', it all comes down to plenty of dough for
anyone wanting to give it a try. They have the SAM440, 460, and there's also
the X-1000. I'm not sure about this, but i think the SAMs were originally
made for the embedded-systems market, and were chosen enroute as a platform
for the AOS 4.x.
Potential customers will be sad to see that all Sam hardware is currently
out of stock..



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