Re: [OpenBIOS] PReP PowerPC "emulation"

[Laurent Vivier]

> OK, maybe I make a mistake. It's not a problem.
> My goals is to run AIX 4.3, 5.1 and 6.1 on QEMU!!!!!.
> Can you help me? What you suggest? 
> I think there is a lot of confusion ( I also make confusion).
> How I can run QEMU to "emulate" CHRP platform ?

By default, qemu-system-ppc emulates a CHRP.

To run AIX 4.3 and 5.1 you can use a 32bit machine (qemu-system-ppc), to run AIX 6.1 you need a 64bit machine (qemu-system-ppc64).

But to be able to run AIX, there are some improvements to add:
- to OpenBIOS: at least RTAS is missing.
- to qemu: emulate hardware supported by AIX (disk controller, network interface, graphic card, ...)

As said before: patches are welcome...

Regards,
Laurent

PReP PowerPC "emulation"

[Massimo Montecchi]

So why the QEMU documentation states in this way ?

Use the executable ‘qemu-system-ppc’ to simulate a complete PREP or PowerMac
PowerPC system.

QEMU emulates the following PowerMac peripherals:

- - UniNorth or Grackle PCI Bridge
   - - PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions
   - - 2 PMAC IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support
   - - NE2000 PCI adapters
   - - Non Volatile RAM
   - - VIA-CUDA with ADB keyboard and mouse.

QEMU emulates the following PREP peripherals:

- - PCI Bridge
   - - PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions
   - - 2 IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support
   - - Floppy disk
   - - NE2000 network adapters
   - - Serial port
   - - PREP Non Volatile RAM
   - - PC compatible keyboard and mouse.

QEMU uses the Open Hack’Ware Open Firmware Compatible BIOS available at
http://perso.magic.fr/l_indien/OpenHackWare/index.htm.

Since version 0.9.1, QEMU uses OpenBIOS http://www.openbios.org/ for the
g3beige and mac99 PowerMac machines. OpenBIOS is a free (GPL v2) portable
firmware implementation. The goal is to implement a 100% IEEE 1275-1994
(referred to as Open Firmware) compliant firmware.

The following options are specific to the PowerPC emulation:
‘-g WxH[xDEPTH]’

Set the initial VGA graphic mode. The default is 800x600x15.
‘-prom-env string’

Set OpenBIOS variables in NVRAM, for example:

qemu-system-ppc -prom-env 'auto-boot?=false' \
 -prom-env 'boot-device=hd:2,\yaboot' \
 -prom-env 'boot-args=conf=hd:2,\yaboot.conf'

These variables are not used by Open Hack’Ware.

More information is available at http://perso.magic.fr/l_indien/qemu-ppc/.

Thanks, sorry and ciao

2010/9/16 Laurent Vivier
> > OK, maybe I make a mistake. It's not a problem.
> > My goals is to run AIX 4.3, 5.1 and 6.1 on QEMU!!!!!.
> > Can you help me? What you suggest?
> > I think there is a lot of confusion ( I also make confusion).
> > How I can run QEMU to "emulate" CHRP platform ?
>
> By default, qemu-system-ppc emulates a CHRP.
>
> To run AIX 4.3 and 5.1 you can use a 32bit machine (qemu-system-ppc), to
> run AIX 6.1 you need a 64bit machine (qemu-system-ppc64).
>
> But to be able to run AIX, there are some improvements to add:
> to OpenBIOS: at least RTAS is missing.
> to qemu: emulate hardware supported by AIX (disk controller, network
>
> interface, graphic card, ...)
>
> As said before: patches are welcome...
>
> Regards,
> Laurent
> --
> --------------------- [e-mail]  ---------------------
> "Tout ce qui est impossible reste à accomplir"    Jules Verne
> "Things are only impossible until they're not" Jean-Luc Picard

PReP PowerPC "emulation"

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 02:50:52PM +0200, Massimo Montecchi wrote:
> So why the QEMU documentation states in this way ?
>
> Use the executable ‘qemu-system-ppc’ to simulate a complete PREP or PowerMac
> PowerPC system.
>
> QEMU emulates the following PowerMac peripherals:
> UniNorth or Grackle PCI Bridge
> PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions
> 2 PMAC IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support
> NE2000 PCI adapters
> Non Volatile RAM
> VIA-CUDA with ADB keyboard and mouse.
>
> QEMU emulates the following PREP peripherals:
> PCI Bridge
> PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions
> 2 IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support
> Floppy disk
> NE2000 network adapters
> Serial port
> PREP Non Volatile RAM
> PC compatible keyboard and mouse.
>
> QEMU uses the Open Hack’Ware Open Firmware Compatible BIOS available at
> http://perso.magic.fr/l_indien/OpenHackWare/index.htm.
>
> Since version 0.9.1, QEMU uses OpenBIOS http://www.openbios.org/ for the
> g3beige and mac99 PowerMac machines. OpenBIOS is a free (GPL v2) portable
> firmware implementation. The goal is to implement a 100% IEEE 1275-1994
> (referred to as Open Firmware) compliant firmware.
>
> The following options are specific to the PowerPC emulation:
> ‘-g WxH[xDEPTH]’
>
> Set the initial VGA graphic mode. The default is 800x600x15.
> ‘-prom-env string’
>
> Set OpenBIOS variables in NVRAM, for example:
>
> qemu-system-ppc -prom-env 'auto-boot?=false' \
>  -prom-env 'boot-device=hd:2,\yaboot' \
>  -prom-env 'boot-args=conf=hd:2,\yaboot.conf'
>
> These variables are not used by Open Hack’Ware.
>
> More information is available at http://perso.magic.fr/l_indien/qemu-ppc/.

That is seriously out of date.  It used to be (in 0.9.1 for example)
that the default was to emulate an oldworld PowerMac or a PReP powerpc.
Now the default is to emulate a newworld Mac with openbios (not open
hackware).  I don't know if PReP support is even being maintained anymore,
since no one cares now that newworld Mac support is there.

So wherever that info above was found is almost entirely useless with
current versions of qemu.  Certainly needs a rewrite with current info.

PReP PowerPC "emulation"

[Andreas Färber]

Am 16.09.2010 um 14:50 schrieb Massimo Montecchi:
> So why the QEMU documentation states in this way ?
>
> Use the executable ‘qemu-system-ppc’ to simulate a complete PREP or  
> PowerMac PowerPC system.
>
> QEMU emulates the following PowerMac peripherals:
>
> • - UniNorth or Grackle PCI Bridge
>    • - PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions
>    • - 2 PMAC IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support
>    • - NE2000 PCI adapters
>    • - Non Volatile RAM
>    • - VIA-CUDA with ADB keyboard and mouse.
> QEMU emulates the following PREP peripherals:
>
> • - PCI Bridge
>    • - PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions
>    • - 2 IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support
>    • - Floppy disk
>    • - NE2000 network adapters
>    • - Serial port
>    • - PREP Non Volatile RAM
>    • - PC compatible keyboard and mouse.
> QEMU uses the Open Hack’Ware Open Firmware Compatible BIOS available  
> at http://perso.magic.fr/l_indien/OpenHackWare/index.htm.
>
> Since version 0.9.1, QEMU uses OpenBIOS http://www.openbios.org/ for  
> the g3beige and mac99 PowerMac machines. OpenBIOS is a free (GPL v2)  
> portable firmware implementation. The goal is to implement a 100%  
> IEEE 1275-1994 (referred to as Open Firmware) compliant firmware.
>
> The following options are specific to the PowerPC emulation:
>
> ‘-g WxH[xDEPTH]’
> Set the initial VGA graphic mode. The default is 800x600x15.
>
> ‘-prom-env string’
> Set OpenBIOS variables in NVRAM, for example:
>
> qemu-system-ppc -prom-env 'auto-boot?=false' \
>  -prom-env 'boot-device=hd:2,\yaboot' \
>  -prom-env 'boot-args=conf=hd:2,\yaboot.conf'
> These variables are not used by Open Hack’Ware.
>
> More information is available at http://perso.magic.fr/l_indien/qemu-ppc/ 
> .

Source?

I don't spot anything particularly wrong in there, except that OHW no  
longer exists and its URLs are dead.
There are both PReP and PowerMac machines in QEMU (-M prep and g3beige/ 
mac99), the peripherals don't look wrong either, no mention of AIX  
working.
In QEMU's git repository there's still the old OHW ppc_rom.bin file,  
an OpenBIOS openbios-ppc file and we've just used the -prom-env 'auto- 
boot?=false' parameter as described above. The ppc_rom.bin file is 512  
KB but the code obviously expects it to be 1 MB.

You've just filed a bug for it but - as pointed out - nobody has cared  
to fix it for over a year, so posting whatever QEMU documentation you  
may find on OpenBIOS' list (as another top-post btw) is really  
unlikely to solve it.

We've already given you some pointers into the code of both QEMU and  
OpenBIOS. If you find out what's going wrong there and needs to be  
changed, you can submit a patch and have it fixed.

You might find the blame function of the repo.or.cz mirror helpful for  
tracking when and why certain changes were done.
http://repo.or.cz/w/qemu.git/blame/refs/heads/master:/hw/ppc_prep.c

Andreas
> Thanks, sorry and ciao
>
> 2010/9/16 Laurent Vivier
> > OK, maybe I make a mistake. It's not a problem.
> > My goals is to run AIX 4.3, 5.1 and 6.1 on QEMU!!!!!.
> > Can you help me? What you suggest?
> > I think there is a lot of confusion ( I also make confusion).
> > How I can run QEMU to "emulate" CHRP platform ?
>
> By default, qemu-system-ppc emulates a CHRP.
>
> To run AIX 4.3 and 5.1 you can use a 32bit machine (qemu-system- 
> ppc), to run AIX 6.1 you need a 64bit machine (qemu-system-ppc64).
>
> But to be able to run AIX, there are some improvements to add:
> to OpenBIOS: at least RTAS is missing.
> to qemu: emulate hardware supported by AIX (disk controller,
>
> network interface, graphic card, ...)
>
> As said before: patches are welcome...
>
> Regards,
> Laurent
> --
> --------------------- [e-mail]  ---------------------
> "Tout ce qui est impossible reste à accomplir"    Jules Verne
> "Things are only impossible until they're not" Jean-Luc Picard
>
> Massimo Montecchi
> Modena - Italy
> -- 
> OpenBIOS                 http://openbios.org/
> Mailinglist:  http://lists.openbios.org/mailman/listinfo
> Free your System - May the Forth be with you

PReP PowerPC "emulation"

[Artyom Tarasenko]

2010/9/17 Andreas Färber :
> I don't spot anything particularly wrong in there, except that OHW no longer
> exists and its URLs are dead.

Actually the URL was already dead more than one year ago, when I
checked it last. I could find virtually no information about this
project. What was the story behind OHW? Did it have problems with the
license? Was it developed on top of a proprietary firmware (the word
"hackware" sort of suggests it)? Did it have any features OpenBIOS
doesn't have?

PReP PowerPC "emulation"

[Blue Swirl]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Artyom Tarasenko
 wrote:
> 2010/9/17 Andreas Färber :
> > I don't spot anything particularly wrong in there, except that OHW no longer
> > exists and its URLs are dead.
>
> Actually the URL was already dead more than one year ago, when I
> checked it last. I could find virtually no information about this
> project. What was the story behind OHW? Did it have problems with the
> license? Was it developed on top of a proprietary firmware (the word
> "hackware" sort of suggests it)? Did it have any features OpenBIOS
> doesn't have?

No, it was GPL and running on bare metal. What was truly hackware was
Forth support, it created a checksum of the Forth words to be executed
and based on checksums known in advance, it executed predefined
actions. This actually worked well enough to boot some OS.

For OpenBIOS, there could be some useful pieces, like RTAS, executable
formats (COFF, Mach-O, etc) and PREP stuff.

I liked the API approach for libraries, for example OHW libc header
files tried to match POSIX libc headers. I'd like to move to this
direction in OpenBIOS as well.

Here's one place I found with source:
http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/o/openhackware/openhackware_0.4.1....

PReP PowerPC "emulation"

[Laurent Vivier]

Le vendredi 17 septembre 2010 à 17:43 +0000, Blue Swirl a écrit :
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Artyom Tarasenko
>  wrote:
> > 2010/9/17 Andreas Färber :
> > > I don't spot anything particularly wrong in there, except that OHW no longer
> > > exists and its URLs are dead.
> >
> > Actually the URL was already dead more than one year ago, when I
> > checked it last. I could find virtually no information about this
> > project. What was the story behind OHW? Did it have problems with the
> > license? Was it developed on top of a proprietary firmware (the word
> > "hackware" sort of suggests it)? Did it have any features OpenBIOS
> > doesn't have?
>
> No, it was GPL and running on bare metal. What was truly hackware was
> Forth support, it created a checksum of the Forth words to be executed
> and based on checksums known in advance, it executed predefined
> actions. This actually worked well enough to boot some OS.
>
> For OpenBIOS, there could be some useful pieces, like RTAS, executable
> formats (COFF, Mach-O, etc) and PREP stuff.

I have a Mach-O loader, written 1 year ago, if needed I can port it to
current architecture (I was trying to load macos kernel). It was a rip
from OHW...
> I liked the API approach for libraries, for example OHW libc header
> files tried to match POSIX libc headers. I'd like to move to this
> direction in OpenBIOS as well.
>
> Here's one place I found with source:
> http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/o/openhackware/openhackware_0.4.1....

PReP PowerPC "emulation"

[Andreas Färber]

Am 17.09.2010 um 19:43 schrieb Blue Swirl:
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Artyom Tarasenko
>  wrote:
> > 2010/9/17 Andreas Färber :
> > > I don't spot anything particularly wrong in there, except that OHW  
> > > no longer
> > > exists and its URLs are dead.
> >
> > Actually the URL was already dead more than one year ago, when I
> > checked it last. I could find virtually no information about this
> > project. What was the story behind OHW? Did it have problems with the
> > license? Was it developed on top of a proprietary firmware (the word
> > "hackware" sort of suggests it)? Did it have any features OpenBIOS
> > doesn't have?

[snip]
> Here's one place I found with source:
> http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/o/openhackware/openhackware_0.4.1....

From my view that was the main problem. There was no public  
repository, just one or two source tarballs, and in QEMU there were  
binary blobs of which no updated source code was provided to improve/ 
debug what was going wrong (CD boot at the time).

Speaking of which, http://wiki.qemu.org/Download should probably  
provide a link to some source tarball as long as ppc_rom.bin is around.

Would anyone be interested in having OHW archived on repo.or.cz, as  
done for kqemu? I personally only have a v0.4.1 around though, like  
the above.

Andreas

PReP PowerPC "emulation"

[Paul Brook]

> Would anyone be interested in having OHW archived on repo.or.cz, as
> done for kqemu? I personally only have a v0.4.1 around though, like
> the above.

While archiving the source may be interesting for historical research,
I strongly discourage anyone from doing development on OHW.
Instead you should make the effort to get OpenBIOS working. While this is a 
bit more work up-front to get a basic functionality, it'll pay you back many 
times over later on.  IMO OHW is a dead-end that's just going to cause you 
untold amounts of pain going forward.

Of course cribbing off OHW to get the first incarnation of the OpenBIOS PReP 
code is probably acceptable :-)

Paul

PReP PowerPC "emulation"

[Andreas Färber]

Am 17.09.2010 um 23:57 schrieb Paul Brook:
> > Would anyone be interested in having OHW archived on repo.or.cz, as
> > done for kqemu? I personally only have a v0.4.1 around though, like
> > the above.
>
> While archiving the source may be interesting for historical research,
> I strongly discourage anyone from doing development on OHW.

Didn't want to suggest that either. As Blue has already explained in  
greater detail than I could have, it uses "weird hacks" while OpenBIOS  
is built on a solid Forth base and has its issues mostly in the QEMU-  
and machine-specific initialization code.

I just thought it might be helpful to be able to link to individual  
OHW files/lines for reference during a transition to OpenBIOS.

HTE,
Andreas