Re: [OpenBIOS] [Qemu-devel] IBM makes AIX 6 beta available for download for everyone

[Blue Swirl]

The correct place for these questions would be the OpenBIOS list
(blatantly cross-posted).

On 7/30/07, Andreas Färber <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Am 19.07.2007 um 09:23 schrieb Natalia Portillo:
> > El jue, 19-07-2007 a las 00:46 +0200, Andreas Färber escribió:
> > > Am 18.07.2007 um 18:26 schrieb Blue Swirl:
> > > > > > It looks like open hack'ware is pretty much stalled, so its hard
> > > > > > telling
> > > > > > what progress will be made futurewise.
> > > > >
> > > > > Might it be possible to replace it with OpenBIOS?
> > > >
> > > > Sure, and as both are GPL useful, code can be shared. But some PPC
> > > > developers are needed. It may still be easier to fix the OHW bugs
> > > > than
> > > > start over anew.
> > >
> > > Not sure I understand... I thought Open Firmware was based on
> > > platform independent Forth code?
> > > I'm running on ppc64 and could try to compile something under Linux
> > > in case that's the problem.
> > > Yes, OF is basically a Forth-interpreter.
> > > Of course this Forth-interpreter is in C and compile to machine
> > > code :p
>
> Yes, that is obvious. Not so obvious was what ppc *developers* were
> needed for.
> I got the other answer afterwards saying that HFS etc. support needed
> to be added.
> > Try to compile OpenBIOS under Linux/PPC (using 32bit compiler, not
> > ppc64) and comment us.
>
> I tried SVN HEAD of both fcode-utils and openbios-devel.
>
> OpenBIOS supposedly has support for ppc and cross-ppc archs but that
> is not true. It currently only has support for cross-ppc (for the old
> PearPC emulator it seems). I copied these files as ppc_config.xml and
> ppc_rules.xml respectively to get the ppc target, in ppc_rules.xml
> changed the tool names to use the standard gcc etc. and was able to
> compile okay. Products based on this unmodified configuration were
> among others an openbios-pearpc.elf file - I thus changed ppc_rom.bin
> in some ppc files to this filename. Launching qemu-system-sparc -boot
> d -cdrom /dev/cdrom with a Debian Etch DVD inserted resulted in an
> opcode error. My guess thus is that this OpenBIOS file is not suited
> for qemu in that configuration?
>
> Some observations that might be of interest:
> - OpenBIOS has support for some (not all) PowerPC processors
> according to some Readme
> - it specifically mentions ppc/AIX and has some apparent IBM
> contributions despite the missing ppc target
> - the cross-ppc config mentions HFS and HFSP which I guess refer to
> HFS and HFS+ filesystems respectively (HFS was set to false, HFSP to
> true)
>
> Maybe someone can shed some more light on what exactly needs to be
> changed config-wise or is missing in OpenBIOS or qemu in order to
> boot AIX 6 or any Linux.
>
> Andreas