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20051126	Cobalt and PReP now work with the 21143 NIC.
		Continuing on Alpha dyntrans things.
		Fixing some more left-shift-by-24 to unsigned.
20051127	Working on OpenFirmware emulation; major cleanup/redesign.
		Progress on MacPPC emulation: NetBSD detects two CPUs (when
		running with -n 2), framebuffer output (for text) works.
		Adding quick-hack Bandit PCI controller and "gc" interrupt
		controller for MacPPC.
20051128	Changing from a Bandit to a Uni-North controller for macppc.
		Continuing on OpenFirmware and MacPPC emulation in general
		(obio controller, and wdc attached to the obio seems to work).
20051129	More work on MacPPC emulation (adding a dummy ADB controller).
		Continuing the PCI bus cleanup (endianness and tag composition)
		and rewriting all PCI controllers' access functions.
20051130	Various minor PPC dyntrans optimizations.
		Manually inlining some parts of the framebuffer redraw routine.
		Slowly beginning the conversion of the old MIPS emulation into
		dyntrans (but this will take quite some time to get right).
		Generalizing quick_pc_to_pointers.
20051201	Documentation update (David Muse has made available a kernel
		which simplifies Debian/DECstation installation).
		Continuing on the ADB bus controller.
20051202	Beginning a rewrite of the Zilog serial controller (dev_zs).
20051203	Continuing on the zs rewrite (now called dev_z8530); conversion
		to devinit style.
		Reworking some of the input-only vs output-only vs input-output
		details of src/console.c, better warning messages, and adding
		a debug dump.
		Removing the concept of "device state"; it wasn't really used.
		Changing some debug output (-vv should now be used to show all
		details about devices and busses; not shown during normal
		startup anymore).
		Beginning on some SPARC instruction disassembly support.
20051204	Minor PPC updates (WALNUT skeleton stuff).
		Continuing on the MIPS dyntrans rewrite.
		More progress on the ADB controller (a keyboard is "detected"
		by NetBSD and OpenBSD).
		Downgrading OpenBSD/arc as a guest OS from "working" to
		"almost working" in the documentation.
		Progress on Algor emulation ("v3" PCI controller).
20051205	Minor updates.
20051207	Sorting devices according to address; this reduces complexity
		of device lookups from O(n) to O(log n) in memory_rw (but no
		real performance increase (yet) in experiments).
20051210	Beginning the work on native dyntrans backends (by making a
		simple skeleton; so far only for Alpha hosts).
20051211	Some very minor SPARC updates.
20051215	Fixing a bug in the MIPS mul (note: not mult) instruction,
		so it also works with non-64-bit emulation. (Thanks to Alec
		Voropay for noticing the problem.)
20051216	More work on the fake/empty/simple/skeleton/whatever backend;
		performance doesn't increase, so this isn't really worth it,
		but it was probably worth it to prepare for a real backend
		later.
20051219	More instr call statistics gathering and analysis stuff.
20051220	Another fix for MIPS 'mul'. Also converting mul and {d,}cl{o,z}
		to dyntrans.
		memory_ppc.c syntax error fix (noticed by Peter Valchev).
		Beginning to move out machines from src/machine.c into
		individual files in src/machines (in a way similar to the
		autodev system for devices).
20051222	Updating the documentation regarding NetBSD/pmax 3.0.
20051223	- " - NetBSD/cats 3.0.
20051225	- " - NetBSD/hpcmips 3.0.
20051226	Continuing on the machine registry redesign.
		Adding support for ARM rrx (33-bit rotate).
		Fixing some signed/unsigned issues (exposed by gcc -W).
20051227	Fixing the bug which prevented a NetBSD/prep 3.0 install kernel
		from starting (triggered when an mtmsr was the last instruction
		on a page). Unfortunately not enough to get the kernel to run
		as well as the 2.1 kernels did.
20051230	Some dyntrans refactoring.
20051231	Continuing on the machine registry redesign.
20060101-10	Continuing... moving more machines. Moving MD interrupt stuff
		from machine.c into a new src/machines/interrupts.c.
20060114	Adding various mvmeppc machine skeletons.
20060115	Continuing on mvme* stuff. NetBSD/mvmeppc prints boot messages
		(for MVME1600) and reaches the root device prompt, but no
		specific hardware devices are emulated yet.
20060116	Minor updates to the mvme1600 emulation mode; the Eagle PCI bus
		seems to work without much modification, and a 21143 can be
		detected, interrupts might work (but untested so far).
		Adding a fake MK48Txx (mkclock) device, for NetBSD/mvmeppc.
20060121	Adding an aux control register for ARM. (A BIG thank you to
		Olivier Houchard for tracking down this bug.)
20060122	Adding more ARM instructions (smulXY), and dev_iq80321_7seg.
20060124	Adding disassembly of more ARM instructions (mia*, mra/mar),
		and some semi-bogus XScale and i80321 registers.
20060201-02	Various minor updates. Moving the last machines out of
		machine.c.
20060204	Adding a -c command line option, for running debugger commands
		before the simulation starts, but after all files have been
		loaded.
		Minor iq80321-related updates.
20060209	Minor hacks (DEVINIT macro, etc).
		Preparing for the generalization of the 64-bit dyntrans address
		translation subsystem.
20060216	Adding ARM ldrd (double-register load).
20060217	Continuing on various ARM-related stuff.
20060218	More progress on the ATA/wdc emulation for NetBSD/iq80321.
		NetBSD/evbarm can now be installed :-)  Updating the docs, etc.
		Continuing on Algor emulation.

==============  RELEASE 0.3.8  ==============


1 <html><head><title>Gavare's eXperimental Emulator:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Miscellaneous</title>
2 <meta name="robots" content="noarchive,nofollow,noindex"></head>
3 <body bgcolor="#f8f8f8" text="#000000" link="#4040f0" vlink="#404040" alink="#ff0000">
4 <table border=0 width=100% bgcolor="#d0d0d0"><tr>
5 <td width=100% align=center valign=center><table border=0 width=100%><tr>
6 <td align="left" valign=center bgcolor="#d0efff"><font color="#6060e0" size="6">
7 <b>Gavare's eXperimental Emulator:</b></font><br>
8 <font color="#000000" size="6"><b>Miscellaneous</b>
9 </font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table><p>
10
11 <!--
12
13 $Id: misc.html,v 1.62 2006/02/18 13:15:21 debug Exp $
14
15 Copyright (C) 2003-2006 Anders Gavare. All rights reserved.
16
17 Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
18 modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
19
20 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
21 notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
22 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
23 notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
24 documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
25 3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products
26 derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
27
28 THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
29 ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
30 IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
31 ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
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38 SUCH DAMAGE.
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40 -->
41
42
43 <a href="./">Back to the index</a>
44
45 <p><br>
46 <h2>Miscellaneous</h2>
47
48 <p>
49 <ul>
50 <li><a href="#networking">Networking</a>
51 <li><a href="#devel">Writing operating system code, or
52 developing firmware, using GXemul</a>
53 <li><a href="#compilercontruct">Using GXemul in compiler contruction courses</a>
54 <li><a href="#disk">How to start the emulator with a disk image</a>
55 <li><a href="#filexfer">Transfering files to/from the guest OS</a>
56 <li><a href="#largeimages">How to extract large gzipped disk images</a>
57 <li><a href="#userland">Running userland binaries</a>
58 <li><a href="#promdump">Using a PROM dump from a real machine</a>
59 </ul>
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67 <p><br>
68 <a name="networking"></a>
69 <h3>Networking:</h3>
70
71 It is possible to let the guest OS running inside the emulator get access to
72 the Internet. If you are interested in the technical details, and the
73 reasons why networking is implemented in the emulator the way it currently
74 is implemented, you might want to read the <a href="technical.html#net">
75 networking section in the technical documentation</a>.
76
77 <p><font color="#ff0000">This is still experimental, hackish, and
78 rather buggy. With NetBSD running as guest operating system, it mostly
79 works.</font>
80
81 <p>When only one machine is being emulated, the following default values
82 apply:<pre>
83 IPv4 address: 10.0.0.1
84 Netmask: 255.0.0.0
85 Gateway / default route: 10.0.0.254
86 Nameserver: 10.0.0.254
87 </pre>
88
89 <p>The emulated machine must of course have a NIC which is emulated
90 correctly. At the moment, the following NICs should work:
91 <ul>
92 <li><tt><b>ether</b></tt>, the "fake" experimental ethernet device
93 (documented <a href="experiments.html#expdevices_ether">here</a>)
94 <li><tt><b>le</b></tt>, Turbochannel Lance Ethernet, as used in
95 DECstation 5000/200 ("3max")
96 <li><tt><b>mec</b></tt>, the SGI O2's ethernet controller
97 <li><tt><b>dec21143</b></tt>, Digital's 21143 NIC (known as <tt>dc</tt>
98 in OpenBSD, or <tt>tlp</tt> in NetBSD)
99 </ul>
100
101 <p>The emulator acts as a NAT-like gateway/firewall; to the outside world
102 it will seem like it is the host's OS that connects to other machines on
103 the internet, not the guest OS.
104
105
106
107
108
109
110 <p><br>
111 <a name="devel"></a>
112 <h3>Writing operating system code, or developing firmware, using GXemul:</h3>
113
114 Is this a good idea? The answer is yes and no, depending on the level of
115 detail you need in your simulations. If you are developing an operating
116 system or operating system kernel of your own, then the emulator can be a
117 complement to testing on real hardware.
118
119 <p>Important things to keep in mind:
120
121 <ul>
122 <li>Porting code to a specific machine mode, e.g. a Silicon Graphics
123 machine, using GXemul, will not "magically" cause the code to
124 work on a real machine. Sometimes code works in GXemul which doesn't
125 work on real hardware, sometimes it's the other way around.
126
127 <p>
128 <li>GXemul contains bugs, and many things are not yet implemented.
129
130 <p>
131 <li><b>Very important!</b> I have only implemented devices in GXemul
132 to the degree that NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, etc don't complain too much.
133 <p>
134 If you are developing a driver for a device which is emulated by
135 GXemul, and your driver does not seem to be working, then the
136 probability of a bug in GXemul's implementation of the device is
137 very much higher than that of a bug in your driver.
138 <p>
139 The device implementations in GXemul are based on the assumption
140 that the emulated OS is already developed and bug-free. They are
141 not primarily intended to be used for development of new device
142 driver code in operating systems, so if you do that, then be
143 prepared for bugs and inconsitencies.
144 <p>
145 <li>CPU details in GXemul are usually wrong. If your code depends
146 on, say, R10000 or MIPS64 specifics, chances are that GXemul will
147 not be sufficient. One example is different revisions of ISAs;
148 64-bit MIPS instructions which should trigger an exception on a
149 real 32-bit MIPS processor usually execute anyway in GXemul. Another
150 example is if userland code tries to access kernel memory; in some
151 cases there is protection against this, but not in all cases (to get
152 higher performance).
153 <p>
154 <li>Caches. There is no cache emulation in GXemul right now. Caches
155 for R2000/R3000 are faked well enough to run NetBSD, Ultrix, etc
156 in the DECstation emulation mode, but other than that, cache
157 operations are treated as nops.
158 </ul>
159
160 <p>The bottom line is that GXemul can be useful as yet another way to test
161 your code during development, but it should not be fully relied on.
162
163
164
165
166
167
168 <p><br>
169 <a name="compilercontruct"></a>
170 <h3>Using GXemul in compiler contruction courses:</h3>
171
172 If you are learning how to write a compiler, and wish to target a
173 realistic target platform, then MIPS or ARM (as emulated by GXemul)
174 might be suitable choices.
175
176 <ul>
177 <li><b>(+)</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;Your compiler needs to output real assembly
178 language code, which the assembler (eg gas, the GNU assembler) can
179 then compile into object format, and then you need to link this
180 into an executable image. This is much closer to how things work
181 in real life than running assembly language listings in a simulator
182 (eg SPIM).
183 <p>
184 <li><b>(-)</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;GXemul does not simulate out-of-order
185 execution, penalties related to instruction scheduling, or
186 load-delays, so it cannot be used to create optimizing compilers
187 that take advantage of such processor features. GXemul keeps
188 track of the number of instructions executed, but that's it.
189 </ul>
190
191
192
193
194
195
196 <p><br>
197 <a name="disk"></a>
198 <h3>How to start the emulator with a disk image:</h3>
199
200 Add <i>-d [prefixes:]diskimagefilename</i> to the command line, where prefixes
201 are one or more single-character options. Run <b>gxemul -h</b>
202 to get a list of possible options.
203
204 <p>
205 Here are some examples. If you want to run a NetBSD/pmax kernel on an
206 emulated DECstation machine, you would use a command line such as this:
207 <pre>
208 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d pmax_diskimage.fs netbsd-pmax-INSTALL</b>
209 </pre>
210
211 <p>NOTE: For some emulation modes, such as the DECstation mode, you do
212 <i>not</i> actually have to specify the name of the kernel, if the disk
213 image is bootable!
214
215 <p>It is possible to have more than one disk. For each -d argument, a disk
216 image is added; the first will be SCSI target 0, the second will be target 1, and so on,
217 unless you specify explicitly which ID number the devices should have.
218 <pre>
219 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d disk0.raw -d disk1.raw -d 5:disk2.raw netbsd-pmax-INSTALL</b>
220 </pre>
221 Note: In the example above, disk2.raw will get scsi id 5.
222
223 <p>If a filename has a 'c' prefix, or ends with ".iso", then it is assumed to be
224 a CDROM device (this can be overridden with a 'd' prefix, to force a read/write disk).
225 For example, the following command would start the emulator with two
226 CDROM images, and one harddisk image:
227 <pre>
228 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d image.iso -d disk0.img -d c:second_cdrom.img netbsd-pmax-INSTALL</b>
229 </pre>
230 Usually, the device with the lowest id becomes the boot device. To override
231 this, add a 'b' prefix to one of the devices:
232 <pre>
233 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d rootdisk.img -d bc:install-cd.iso name_of_kernel</b>
234 </pre>
235 If you have a physical CD-ROM drive on the host machine, say /dev/cd0c, you can
236 use it as a CD-ROM directly accessible from within the emulator:
237 <pre>
238 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d rootdisk.img -d bc:/dev/cd0c name_of_kernel</b>
239 </pre>
240 It is probably possible to use harddisks as well this way, but I would not
241 recommend it.
242 <p>
243 Using emulated tape drives is a bit more complicated than disks, because a
244 tape can be made up of several "files" with space in between. The solution
245 I have choosen is to have one file in the host's file system space for each
246 tape file. The prefix for using tapes is 't', and the filename given is
247 for the <i>first</i> file on that tape (number zero, implicitly). For
248 files following file nr 0, a dot and the filenumber is appended to the
249 filename.
250 <p>
251 As an example, starting the emulator with
252 <pre>
253 <b>-d t4:mytape.img</b>
254 </pre>
255 will cause SCSI id 4 to be a tape device, using the following file number
256 to name translation scheme:
257 <p>
258 <center>
259 <table border="0">
260 <tr>
261 <td><b>File number:</b></td>
262 <td><b>File name in the host's filesystem:</b></td>
263 </tr>
264 <tr>
265 <td align="center">0</td>
266 <td align="left">mytape.img</td>
267 </tr>
268 <tr>
269 <td align="center">1</td>
270 <td align="left">mytape.img.1</td>
271 </tr>
272 <tr>
273 <td align="center">2</td>
274 <td align="left">mytape.img.2</td>
275 </tr>
276 <tr>
277 <td align="center">..</td>
278 <td align="left">..</td>
279 </tr>
280 </table>
281 </center>
282 <p>
283 If you already have a number of tape files, which should be placed on the
284 same emulated tape, then you might not want to rename all those files.
285 Use symbolic links instead (ln -s).
286 <p>
287 There is another advantage to using symbolic links for tape filenames:
288 every time a tape is rewound, it is reopened using the filename given
289 on the command line. By changing what the symbolic name points to,
290 you can "switch tapes" without quiting and restarting the emulator.
291
292
293
294
295
296
297 <p><br>
298 <a name="filexfer"></a>
299 <h3>Transfering files to/from the guest OS:</h3>
300
301 If the emulated machine supports networking (see
302 <a href="#networking">above</a>), then transfering files via FTP is
303 probably easiest.
304
305 <p>There is another way of transfering files which works for any kind of
306 emulated machine which supports disks (either SCSI or IDE). Any file can
307 be supplied as a disk image. For example, consider the following:<pre>
308 $ <b>gxemul -XEcats -d nbsd_cats.img -d archive.tar.gz netbsd-GENERIC</b>
309 </pre>
310 This will start NetBSD/cats with <tt>nbsd_cats.img</tt> as IDE master on
311 controller 0 (wd0), and <tt>archive.tar.gz</tt> as IDE slave on controller
312 0 (wd1). From inside NetBSD, it is now possible to extract the files using
313 the following command:<pre>
314 (inside emulated NetBSD/cats)
315 # <b>tar zxvf /dev/wd1c</b>
316 </pre>
317 Don't worry if NetBSD complains about lack of disklabel; it doesn't
318 matter. On some machines, NetBSD uses <tt>wd1d</tt> instead of
319 <tt>wd1c</tt> for the entire disk.
320 There is also a minor problem: reading the end of the disk image. If you
321 experience problems untaring archives like this, then pad out the archive
322 first with some zeroes.
323
324 <p>Transfering files <i>out</i> from the emulated operating system to the
325 host can be done the same way. First, prepare an empty archive file:<pre>
326 $ <b>dd if=/dev/zero of=newarchive.tar bs=1024 count=1 seek=10000</b>
327 </pre>This example created a 10 MB empty file. Then, start the emulator
328 like this:<pre>
329 $ <b>gxemul -XEcats -d nbsd_cats.img -d archive.tar netbsd-GENERIC</b>
330 </pre>
331 and transfer files by creating an archive directly onto the disk image:<pre>
332 (inside emulated NetBSD/cats)
333 # <b>tar cvf /dev/wd1c filenames</b>
334 </pre>
335 where filenames are the files or directories to transfer.
336
337
338
339
340
341 <p><br>
342 <a name="largeimages"></a>
343 <h3>How to extract large gzipped disk images:</h3>
344
345 Unix filesystems usually support large files with "holes". Holes are
346 zero-filled blocks that don't actually exist on disk. This is very
347 practical for emulated disk images, as it is possible to create a very
348 large disk image without using up much space at all.
349
350 <p>
351 Using gzip and gunzip on disk images can be <i>very</i> slow, as these
352 files can be multiple gigabytes large, but this is usually necessary for
353 transfering disk images over the internet. If you receive a gzipped disk
354 image, say disk.img.gz, and run a naive
355 <p>
356 <pre>
357 $ <b>gunzip disk.img.gz</b>
358 </pre>
359 <p>
360 on it, you will not end up with an optimized file unless
361 gunzip supports that. (In my experiments, it doesn't.) In plain English,
362 if you type <b>ls -l</b> and the filesize is 9 GB, it will actually occupy
363 9 GB of disk space! This is often unacceptable.
364 <p>
365 Using a simple tool which only writes blocks that are non-zero, a lot of
366 space can be saved. Compile the program cp_removeblocks in the
367 experiments/ directory, and type:
368 <p>
369 <pre>
370 $ <b>gunzip -c disk.img.gz | cp_removeblocks /dev/stdin disk.img</b>
371 </pre>
372
373 <p>
374 This will give you a disk.img which looks like it is 9 GB, and works like
375 the real file, but the holes are not written out to the disk. (You can see
376 this by running for example <b>du disk.img</b> to see the physical block
377 count.)
378
379
380
381 <p><br>
382 <a name="userland"></a>
383 <h3>Running userland binaries:</h3>
384
385 <font color="#ff0000">Note: This does not really work yet.</font>
386
387 <p>There is some skeleton code for running userland programs as well. This
388 will not emulate any particular machine, but instead try to translate
389 syscalls from e.g. NetBSD/pmax into the host's OS' syscalls. Right now,
390 this is just a proof-of-concept, to show that it could work; there's lots
391 of work left to do to make it actually run useful programs.
392
393 <p>
394
395 <ul>
396 <li><b>NetBSD/pmax:</b>
397 <br>
398 Running /bin/hostname or /bin/date and similarly trivial
399 programs from the NetBSD/pmax distribution works:<pre>
400 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_hostname</b>
401 tab.csbnet.se
402 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_date</b>
403 Sun Jan 25 02:26:14 GMT 2004
404 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep</b>
405 usage: pmax_bin_sleep seconds
406 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep 5</b>
407 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sync</b>
408 </pre>
409
410 <p>
411 <li><b>Ultrix:</b>
412 <br>
413 At least /bin/date and /bin/hostname work:<pre>
414 $ <b>gxemul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_date</b>
415 UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 54
416 UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 62
417 Mon Feb 9 12:50:59 WET 2004
418 $ <b>gxemul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_hostname</b>
419 tab.csbnet.se
420 </pre>
421
422 <!--
423 <p>
424 <li><b>NetBSD/powerpc:</b>
425 <br>
426 /bin/sync from NetBSD/macppc works, but probably not much else.<pre>
427 $ <b>gxemul -v -u netbsd/powerpc netbsd-1.6.2-macppc-bin-sync</b>
428 ...
429 [ sync() ]
430 [ exit(0) ]
431 cpu_run_deinit(): All CPUs halted.
432
433 </pre>
434
435 <p>
436 <li><b>Linux/PPC64:</b>
437 <br>
438 The <a href="http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-ppc/#h13">64-bit Hello World assembly language example</a>
439 on IBM's developerWorks pages runs:<pre>
440 $ <b>ppc64-unknown-linux-as hello-ppc64.s -o hello-ppc64.o</b>
441 $ <b>ppc64-unknown-linux-ld hello-ppc64.o -o hello-ppc64</b>
442 $ <b>gxemul -q -u linux/ppc64 hello-ppc64</b>
443 Hello, world!
444
445 </pre>
446 -->
447
448 </ul>
449
450
451
452
453
454 <p><br>
455 <a name="promdump"></a>
456 <h3>Using a PROM dump from a real machine:</h3>
457
458 Raw PROM images from real machines can, in a few cases, be used in
459 the emulator. ROM code is usually much more sensitive to correctness
460 of the emulator than operating system kernels or userland programs
461 are, so don't expect any PROM image to just magically work.
462
463
464 <p>
465 <h4>Dumping the PROM on a DECstation 5000/125:</h4>
466 The image first needs to be extracted from the machine. There are
467 several ways to do this.
468 <ul>
469 <li>Use hardware to read the PROM chip(s) directly. Not easy if you
470 don't have such a hardware reader.
471 <li>Copy the PROM memory range into a file, from a running
472 operating system. You need a running OS, and it must
473 have access to the PROM memory range. NetBSD, for example,
474 doesn't allow that from userland.
475 <li>Hook up a serial console and dump using the PROM's own dump
476 command.
477 </ul>
478 <p>
479 The easiest way is to hook up a serial console. The terminal must be
480 able to capture output to a file.
481 <p>
482 These are approximately the commands that I used:
483 <pre>
484 >><b>cnfg</b> <i>Show machine configuration</i>
485
486 >><b>printenv</b> <i>Show environment variables</i>
487
488 >><b>setenv more 0</b> <i>This turns off the More messages</i>
489
490 >><b>e -x 0xbfc00000:0xbfffffff</b> <i>Dump the PROM data</i>
491 </pre>
492 <p>
493 Remember that DECstations are little endian, so if the dump data
494 looks like this:
495 <pre>
496 bfc00000: 0x0bf0007e
497 </pre>
498 then the bytes in memory are actually 0x7e, 0x00, 0xf0, and 0x0b.
499 <p>
500 At 9600 bps, about 10KB can be dumped per minute, so it takes a while.
501 Once enough of the PROM has been dumped, you can press CTRL-C to break out.
502 Then, restore the more environment variable:
503 <pre>
504 >><b>setenv more 24</b>
505 </pre>
506 <p>
507 Now, convert the data you just saved (little-endian words -> bytes),
508 and store in a file. Let's call this file DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin.
509 <pre>
510 $ <b>decprom_dump_txt_to_bin DECstation5000_125_promdump.txt DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin</b>
511 </pre>
512 This binary image can now be used in the emulator:
513 <pre>
514 $ <b>gxemul -e 3min -Q -M128 -q 0xbfc00000:DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin</b>
515
516 KN02-BA V5.7e
517 ?TFL: 3/scc/access (1:Ln1 reg-12: actual=0x00 xpctd=0x01) [KN02-BA]
518 ?TFL: 3/scc/io (1:Ln0 tx bfr not empty. status=0X 0) [KN02-BA]
519 ...
520 --More--?TFL: 3/scsi/cntl (CUX, cause= 1000002C)
521 >><b>?</b>
522 ? [cmd]
523 boot [[-z #] [-n] #/path [ARG...]]
524 cat SCRPT
525 cnfg [#]
526 d [-bhw] [-S #] RNG VAL
527 e [-bhwcdoux] [-S #] RNG
528 erl [-c]
529 go [ADR]
530 init [#] [-m] [ARG...]
531 ls [#]
532 passwd [-c] [-s]
533 printenv [EVN]
534 restart
535 script SCRPT
536 setenv EVN STR
537 sh [-belvS] [SCRPT] [ARG..]
538 t [-l] #/STR [ARG..]
539 unsetenv EVN
540 >><b>cnfg</b>
541 3: KN02-BA DEC V5.7e TCF0 (128 MB)
542 (enet: 00-00-00-00-00-00)
543 (SCSI = 7)
544 0: PMAG-BA DEC V5.3a TCF0
545 >><b>printenv</b>
546 boot=
547 testaction=q
548 haltaction=h
549 more=24
550 #=3
551 console=*
552 osconsole=3
553 >>
554 </pre>
555
556 <p><font color="#ff0000">(Note: at the moment, this doesn't work.
557 I must have broken something when fixing something else, but this
558 is what it looked like at the time.)</font>
559
560 <p>During bootup, the PROM complains <i>a lot</i> about hardware failures.
561 That's because the emulator doesn't emulate the hardware well enough yet.
562
563 <p>The command line options used are: <tt>-e 3min</tt> for
564 "DECstation 3min" (5000/1xx), <tt>-Q</tt> to supress the emulator's own PROM
565 call emulation, <tt>-M128</tt> for 128MB RAM (because GXemul doesn't correctly
566 emulate memory detection well enough for the PROM to accept, so it will
567 always believe there is 128MB ram anyway), and <tt>-q</tt> to supress debug messages.
568 The <tt>0xbfc00000</tt> in front of the filename tells GXemul that it is a raw
569 binary file which should be loaded at a specific virtual address.
570
571
572 <p><br>
573 <h4>Dumping the PROM on a SGI O2:</h4>
574
575 The general ideas in this section applies to using ROM images from other
576 machines as well. I have also tried this on an SGI IP32 ("O2"), in addition
577 to the DECstation.
578
579 <p>For the O2, a suitable command to dump the prom memory range is
580 <pre>
581 &gt;&gt; <b>dump -b 0xBFC00000:0xBFC80000</b>
582 </pre>
583 Make sure you capture all the output (via serial console) into a file,
584 and then run <tt>experiments/sgiprom_to_bin</tt> on the captured file.
585
586 <p>
587 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
588 <a href="sgi-o2-real.jpg"><img src="sgi-o2-real_small.jpg"></a>
589 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
590 <a href="20050817-sgi-o2-success-7.png"><img src="20050817-sgi-o2-success-7_small.png"></a>
591 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
592 <a href="20050817-sgi-o2-success-8.png"><img src="20050817-sgi-o2-success-8_small.png"></a>
593
594 <p>The photo on the left is from the real machine. The other two are
595 screenshots of the PROM running experimentally in GXemul, using <tt>-Y2</tt>
596 framebuffer scaledown.
597
598 <p>Normally during bootup, the IP32 PROM does a Power-On test which makes
599 sure that the caches and other things are working properly. GXemul doesn't
600 emulate all those things well enough for the tests to pass. The
601 experimental screenshots above were taken with cache detection skipped
602 manually.
603
604 <p><font color="#ff0000">
605 In other words: don't expect this to work out-of-the-box with GXemul right
606 now. It might work once I've added correct cache emulation.</font>
607
608 <p>The command line used to start the emulator, once correct cache
609 emulation has been implemented, would be something like <tt>gxemul -XQeo2
610 0xbfc00000:prom.bin</tt>.
611
612 <p>The same caution applies when dealing with SGI PROMs as with
613 DECstation PROMs: GXemul doesn't really emulate the hardware, it only
614 "fakes" devices well enough to fool some things, primarily NetBSD, that
615 it is emulating a real machine. ROM code is usually a <i>lot</i> more
616 picky about the details.
617
618 <p>The graphics used in the O2 is (as far as I know) undocumented. Combining
619 some traces of info from how Linux/O2 draws to the screen with some
620 reverse-engineering of my own, I've implemented enough of the controller to
621 let the PROM draw rectangles and bitmaps, but not much more. The SCSI
622 controller is not implemented yet either.
623
624
625
626
627 </p>
628
629 </body>
630 </html>

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