Re: Virtualizing HP PA-RISC unix station other than B160L

[Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>]

Hi Thierry,

On 9/5/21 3:24 PM, Richard Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 5 Sep 2021, 10:30 , <thierry.briot@gmail.com <mailto:thierry.briot@gmail.com>> wrote:
> For my company (Nexter Systems, France), I am using qemu-system-hppa
> for virtualizing HP PA-RISC workstations. That works well. You have
> made a very good job !

Thanks.

> But my machines are other than B160L (for example B180L), and I have
> to completely reinstall HP-UX on each emulated machine.
> If I do an iso system disk image of my B180L, this iso isn't bootable
> on qemu-system-hppa.
>
> Thus, my questions are :
>
> * Is it planned to emulate other HP unix workstations than B160L (for
> example B180L) ?

Maybe at some point a 64-bit capable system, e.g. C3000, and maybe
an older 32-bit system, e.g. 715/64.
For the 64bit system additions to the emulated firmware and additional
64-bit qemu support is necessary,
and for the 715/64 we need an additional NCR710 SCSI driver.
Both are lots of work.

The B180L is exactly the same as the B160L, with just a faster CPU:
https://www.openpa.net/systems/hp-visualize_b132l_b160l_b180l.html

> * Or, what changes should I make to my iso image to do it usable ? If
> I replace the /boot filesystem of the B180L image with the B160L one,
> I get a kernel panic at boot time.

I don't know HP-UX so well. I could imagine that your physical machines
have different SCSI controller cards which are used by HP-UX, and which
aren't emulated in qemu yet. That's maybe why qemu can't boot your already
installed images.
If you post the output I maybe can give more info.

> Helge is the one that did all the hw support, I just did the CPU.
> There are no real plans to do another machine. I'm not familiar with
> the specs between the HP machines to know how much work that would
> be.

There is a very good overview of the various HP machines at openPA:
https://www.openpa.net/systems/

Helge