I have begun doing work with OpenBIOS. I was wondering if it is
possible to compile OpenBIOS for PowerPC on Mac OS X? If not, what
Linux distro should I use? Any advice would really help.
Hi folks,
I've been trying to use OpenBIOS with QEMU, and I've had trouble
getting it to boot any PowerPC-based OS discs (Linux, Mac OS X, etc).
OpenBIOS just doesn't seem to find anything bootable. If I try booting
QEMU with -nographic, I get this output (I get the same with a
self-built openbios-qemu.elf from the OpenBIOS SVN as well):
---- snip ----
>> =============================================================
>> OpenBIOS 1.0 [Apr 12 2009 00:55]
>> Configuration device id QEMU version 1 machine id 1
>> CPUs: 1
>> Memory: 128M
>> UUID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
>> CPU type PowerPC,970FX
Welcome to OpenBIOS v1.0 built on Apr 12 2009 00:55
>> ELF - yaboot_startup: Entering boot, no path
>> ELF - try_bootinfo: Trying hd:0,ppc\bootinfo.txt
>> ELF - try_bootinfo: Can't open hd:0,ppc\bootinfo.txt
>> ELF - try_path: Trying hd:2,\ofclient
>> ELF - try_path: Can't open hd:2,\ofclient
>> ELF - try_path: Trying hd:2,\yaboot conf=hd:2,\yaboot.conf
>> ELF - try_path: Can't open hd:2,\yaboot
>> *** Boot failure! No secondary bootloader specified ***
---- snip ----
Laurent Vivier suggested in this conversation in February
(http://lists.openbios.org/pipermail/openbios/2009-February/003476.html)
that there could be a bug in partition map decoding. Has such a bug
been confirmed? I was trying to find the bug myself (I am an
experienced C/C++ programmer), but the bug seems to be subtle, and my
lack of familiarity with the code base doesn't help much.
I've been trying to figure this out for 7 hours straight now... Any
advice or other help would be much appreciated!
- Steven
Hi all,
Whilst spending some time working on debugging SPARC64 support with
Qemu/OpenBIOS, it became readily apparent that progress was being
hampered by the lack of debugging facilities in OpenBIOS (see
http://lists.openbios.org/pipermail/openbios/2009-August/003949.html).
Hence I've been working on adding a source debugger to OpenBIOS which
should enable developers to step/trace through Forth words in order to
locate bugs in the lower level Forth OpenBIOS code.
The attached patch implements a Forth Source Debugger based upon the
IEEE-1275 specification; it is not a comprehensive implementation but
has already proved to be very useful in my tests here. A sample session
using the debugger goes something like this:
Welcome to OpenBIOS v1.0 built on Oct 31 2009 10:09
Type 'help' for detailed information
[unix] Booting default not supported.
0 > : bar ." test " ; ok
0 > debug bar
Stepper keys: <space>/<enter> Up Down Trace Rstack Forth
ok
0 > bar
: bar ( Empty )
0xf7e11f0c: (")
: (") ( Empty )
0xf7dfd928: r> ( f7e11f0c )
0xf7dfd92c: dup ( f7e11f0c f7e11f0c )
0xf7dfd930: 2 ( f7e11f0c f7e11f0c 2 )
0xf7dfd934: cells ( f7e11f0c f7e11f0c 8 )
0xf7dfd938: + ( f7e11f0c f7e11f14 )
0xf7dfd93c: over ( f7e11f0c f7e11f14 f7e11f0c )
0xf7dfd940: cell+ ( f7e11f0c f7e11f14 f7e11f10 )
0xf7dfd944: @ ( f7e11f0c f7e11f14 5 )
0xf7dfd948: rot ( f7e11f14 5 f7e11f0c )
0xf7dfd94c: over ( f7e11f14 5 f7e11f0c 5 )
0xf7dfd950: + ( f7e11f14 5 f7e11f11 )
0xf7dfd954: aligned ( f7e11f14 5 f7e11f14 )
0xf7dfd958: cell+ ( f7e11f14 5 f7e11f18 )
0xf7dfd95c: >r ( f7e11f14 5 )
0xf7dfd960: (semis)
[ Finished (") ] ( f7e11f14 5 )
0xf7e11f1c: type test ( Empty )
0xf7e11f20: (semis)
[ Finished bar ] ok
0 > bar
: bar ( Empty )
0xf7e11f0c: (")
: (") ( Empty )
0xf7dfd928: r>
[ Up to bar ] ( f7e11f14 5 )
0xf7e11f1c: type test ( Empty )
0xf7e11f20: (semis)
[ Finished bar ] ok
0 >
As eluded to in earlier posts to the list, my initial attempts at adding
debug support were focused on storing additional information in the
rstack. Unfortunately this created extra problems in debugging some of
the more interesting Forth words, since they would manipulate the return
stack and cause the debugger to get confused.
My final implementation works in a much more simple way; when the debug
word is invoked with the name of the word to debug, the start and end
addresses of the word are added to a debug linked list. Then in the
next() function, we iterate through the linked list to see if the
current PC lies within one of the functions within. If this is the case,
we enter the source debugger in step/trace mode as appropriate.
Having given the patch a reasonably good test here, I'm quite pleased
with the additional functionality it provides. The only minor downsides
I can see are that the patch adds extra work in docol(), semis() and
next() in order to update the debug linked list. I've tried to wrap most
of the complexity in conditional while() statements so that it is only
invoked while the debugger is active, and so should have a minimal
impact on normal runtime performance (which seems to be the case here).
Please test the patch and let me know if it requires extra work in order
for it to be considered ready for committing to the OpenBIOS SVN repository.
ATB,
Mark.
--
Mark Cave-Ayland - Senior Technical Architect
PostgreSQL - PostGIS
Sirius Corporation plc - control through freedom
http://www.siriusit.co.uk
t: +44 870 608 0063
Sirius Labs: http://www.siriusit.co.uk/labs
Is there a roadmap or plan that states when version 1.1 of OpenBIOS
will be declared? I'm wondering this because a lot of features have
been added to OpenBIOS since version 1.0 was released (7 months ago).
Hello,
I have an old system running Interactive Unix on a 15 head harddisk (4Gb).
I would like to clone this system to a 16 head harddisk because it is now difficult to find 15 head harddisks.
The problem is that I cannot modify the system which think it has a 15 head harddisk.
I suppose that Interactive unix use the Int13 interrupt mechanism to access the disk (am I wrong ?).
I wonder if there is a possibility to modify openbios so that a 16 head harddisk is used and is simulated as a 15 head harddisk by the bios ?
I would probably have to modify the drivers/ide.c file to do a conversion.
My questions are:
- Can openbios boot Interactive Unix ?
- What implementation should I use ?
Thanks for any help,
Leszek Hanusz
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