Dear Jason,
Therefore, emulation is the approach I'd really like to pursue if it's possible.
Has anyone got SunOS 4.x to boot under QEMU using the latest OpenBIOS firmware instead of PROLL ?
Unfortunately no. I tried NetBSD 3.0 and Solaris 8 so far, both did not work (yet).
Is anyone out there even working on this possibility. or is the focus on Linux or one of the NetBSD / OpenBSD implementations ?
We're definitely looking into getting operating systems besides Linux to work on (qemu/)OpenBIOS/Sparc32, but we can also use help here.
I got NetBSD booting the kernel, but it fails reading the root filesystem: Welcome to OpenBIOS v1.0RC1 built on Jun 5 2006 15:07 Type 'help' for detailed information
[sparc] Kernel already loaded OBP version 3, revision 2.25 (plugin rev 2) Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
NetBSD 3.0 (GENERIC) #0: Mon Dec 19 04:01:27 UTC 2005 builds@b3.netbsd.org:/home/builds/ab/netbsd-3-0-RELEASE/sparc/200512182024Z-obj/home/builds/ab/netbsd-3-0-RELEASE/src/sys/arch/sparc/compile/GENERIC total memory = 127 MB avail memory = 120 MB bootpath: data fault: pc=0xf02a4f3c addr=0x7ff000 sfsr=126<PERR=0,LVL=1,AT=1,FT=1,FAV,OW> panic: kernel fault halted
Booting from the NetBSD 3.0 CD (sparccd-3.0.iso) I got an exception, since the a.out header shows some weird values:
Welcome to OpenBIOS v1.0RC1 built on Jun 5 2006 15:07 Type 'help' for detailed information
[sparc] Booting file 'cdrom' with parameters '<NULL>' Loading a.out image... N_TXTADDR: 0x00002000 (0x30800007 bytes) N_TXTOFF : 0x00000020 (0x00000200) N_DATADDR: 0x30802007 (0 bytes) Loaded 8388615(0x30800007) bytes entry point is 0x4000 Jumping to entry point... Unhandled Exception 0x00000002 PC = 0x00000000 NPC = 0x00000004 Stopping execution
Booting Solaris 8 I get: Welcome to OpenBIOS v1.0RC1 built on Jun 5 2006 15:07 Type 'help' for detailed information
[sparc] Booting file 'cdrom' with parameters '<NULL>' Loading a.out image... Loaded 7680 bytes entry point is 0x4000 Jumping to entry point... bootblk: can't find the boot program halt, power off
So it tries to load /platform/sun4m/utfboot from CD and fails.
Any help is appreciated.
Stefan