Re: [OpenBIOS] [Qemu-devel] Qemu and Linux 2.4

[Blue Swirl]

On 9/26/07, Alexander Voropay  wrote:
>  wrote:
> > > > QEMU malta emulation is not really complete, to put it mildly
> > >
> > > Out of curiosity, what parts did you miss?
> >
> > Like, for example, the PCI stuff. So I can use the network card.
>
> PCI stuff in the QEMU/Malta works fine, but pseudo-bootrom
> does not perform PCI enumeration and leaves uninitialized PCI BARs.
>
> Linux MIPS/Malta 2.4 can not perform PCI enumeration too.  The LANCE
> Ethernet driver *requres* a pre-initialized BARs. The situation even worse,
> since current Linux 2.4 can't be even built with NEW_PCI and PCI_AUTO
> options at all (due to linkage error).
>
> http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/PCI_Subsystem
>
> There is the same PCI problem with NetBSD/evbmips and seems VxWorks/Malta.
> > And yes, I am aware of YAMON.
>
> AFAIK, YAMON may runs on the MIPS hardware only, and may not
> be redistribuded in the source or binary form.
>
> Anyway, YAMON binary does not work on the Qemu/Malta. The Galileo
> chip is far more complicated then Qemu emulation. It contains four DMA
> channels, four timers e.t.c. e.t.c.
> > > I recommend to improve the Qemu Malta emulation, and make it work with
> > > 2.4 Malta kernels. (ISTR it used to work, so it shouldn't need a lot to
> > > get there.)
> >
> > I'm sure that improving the Qemu Malta emulation is a very noble goal,
> > but for people that need a working 2.4 kernel NOW, my patch could be
> > useful. Having the QEMU target in 2.6 surely helped me.
>
> The only thing we need is a good bootrom (BIOS) for the MIPS/Malta
> (Free-YAMON ;)

Someone could port OpenBIOS or LinuxBIOS to MIPS.