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

[Natalia Portillo <iosglpgc@teleline.es>]

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