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$Id: HISTORY,v 1.1539 2007/05/01 04:03:51 debug Exp $
20070415	Landisk PCLOCK should be 33.33 MHz, not 50 MHz. (This makes
		the clock run at correct speed.)
		FINALLY found and fixed the bug which caused OpenBSD/landisk
		to randomly bug out: an &-sign was missing in the special case
		handling of FPSCR in the 'LDS.L @Rm+,FPSCR' instruction.
		Adding similar special case handling for 'LDC.L @Rm+,SR'
		(calling sh_update_sr() instead of just loading).
		Implementing the 'FCNVSD FPUL,DRn' and 'FCNVDS DRm,FPUL'
		SuperH instructions.
		The 'LDC Rm,SR' instruction now immediately breaks out of the
		dyntrans loop if an interrupt is to be triggered.
20070416	In memory_rw.c, if mapping a page as writable, make sure to
		invalidate code translations even if the data access was a
		read.
		Minor SuperH updates.
20070418	Removing the dummy M68K emulation mode.
		Minor SH update (turning unnecessary sts_mach_rn, sts_macl_rn,
		and sts_pr_rn instruction handlers into mov_rm_rn).
20070419	Beginning to add a skeleton for an M88K mode: Adding a hack to
		allow OpenBSD/m88k a.out binaries to be loaded, and disassembly
		of a few simple 88K instructions.
		Commenting out the 'LDC Rm,SR' fix from a few days ago, because
		it made Linux/dreamcast bug out.
		Adding a hack to dev_sh4.c (an extra translation cache
		invalidation), which allows OpenBSD/landisk to boot ok after
		an install. Upgrading the Landisk machine mode to stable,
		updating documentation, etc.
20070420	Experimenting with adding a PCI controller (pcic) to dev_sh4.
		Adding a dummy Realtek 8139C+ skeleton device (dev_rtl8139c).
		Implementing the first M88K instructions (br, or[.u] imm), and
		adding disassembly of some more instructions.
20070421	Continuing a little on dev_rtl8139c.
20070422	Implementing the 9346 EEPROM "read" command for dev_rtl8139c.
		Finally found and fixed an old bug in the log n symbol search
		(it sometimes missed symbols). Debug trace (-i, -t etc) should
		now show more symbols. :-)
20070423	Continuing a little on M88K disassembly.
20070428	Fixing a memset arg order bug in src/net/net.c (thanks to
		Nigel Horne for noticing the bug).
		Applying parts of a patch from Carl van Schaik to clear out
		bottom bits of MIPS addresses more correctly, when using large
		page sizes, and doing some other minor cleanup/refactoring.
		Fixing a couple of warnings given by gcc with the -W option (a
		few more warnings than just plain -Wall).
		Reducing SuperH dyntrans physical address space from 64-bit to
		32-bit (since SH5/SH64 isn't imlemented yet anyway).
		Adding address-to-symbol annotation to a few more instructions
		in the SuperH instruction trace output.
		Beginning regression testing for the next release.
		Reverting the value of SCIF_DELAYED_TX_VALUE from 1 to 2,
		because OpenBSD/landisk may otherwise hang randomly.
20070429	The ugly hack/workaround to get OpenBSD/landisk booting without
		crashing does NOT work anymore (with the April 21 snapshot
		of OpenBSD/landisk). Strangely enough, removing the hack
		completely causes OpenBSD/landisk to work (!).
		More regression testing (re-testing everything SuperH-related,
		and some other things).
		Cobalt interrupts were actually broken; fixing by commenting
		out the DEC21143s in the Cobalt machine.
20070430	More regression testing.
20070501	Updating the OpenBSD/landisk install instructions to use
		4.1 instead of the current snapshot.
		GAAAH! OpenBSD/landisk 4.1 _needs_ the ugly hack/workaround;
		reintroducing it again. (The 4.1 kernel is actually from
		2007-03-11.)
		Simplifying the NetBSD/evbarm install instructions a bit.
		More regression testing.

==============  RELEASE 0.4.5.1  ==============


1 <html><head><title>Gavare's eXperimental Emulator:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Miscellaneous</title>
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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 1.68 2007/04/28 09:18:34 debug Exp $
14
15 Copyright (C) 2003-2007 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:
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20 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
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22 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
23 notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
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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="#devel">Writing operating system code, or
51 developing firmware, using GXemul</a>
52 <li><a href="#compilercontruct">Using GXemul in compiler contruction courses</a>
53 <li><a href="#disk">How to start the emulator with a disk image</a>
54 <li><a href="#tape_images">How to start the emulator with tape images</a>
55 <li><a href="#disk_overlays">How to use disk image overlays</a>
56 <li><a href="#filexfer">Transfering files to/from the guest OS</a>
57 <li><a href="#largeimages">How to extract large gzipped disk images</a>
58 <li><a href="#userland">Running userland binaries</a>
59 <li><a href="#promdump">Using a PROM dump from a real machine</a>
60 </ul>
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70 <p><br>
71 <a name="devel"></a>
72 <h3>Writing operating system code, or developing firmware, using GXemul:</h3>
73
74 Is this a good idea? The answer is yes and no, depending on the level of
75 detail you need in your simulations. If you are developing an operating
76 system or operating system kernel of your own, then the emulator can be a
77 complement to testing on real hardware.
78
79 <p>Important things to keep in mind:
80
81 <ul>
82 <li>Porting code to a specific machine mode, e.g. a Silicon Graphics
83 machine, using GXemul, will not "magically" cause the code to
84 work on a real machine. Sometimes code works in GXemul which doesn't
85 work on real hardware, sometimes it's the other way around.
86
87 <p>
88 <li>GXemul contains bugs, and many things are not yet implemented.
89
90 <p>
91 <li><b>Very important!</b> I have only implemented devices in GXemul
92 to the degree that NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, etc don't complain too much.
93 <p>
94 If you are developing a driver for a device which is emulated by
95 GXemul, and your driver does not seem to be working, then the
96 probability of a bug in GXemul's implementation of the device is
97 very much higher than that of a bug in your driver.
98 <p>
99 The device implementations in GXemul are based on the assumption
100 that the emulated OS is already developed and bug-free. They are
101 not primarily intended to be used for development of new device
102 driver code in operating systems, so if you do that, then be
103 prepared for bugs and inconsitencies.
104 <p>
105 <li>CPU details in GXemul are usually wrong. If your code depends
106 on, say, R10000 or MIPS64 specifics, chances are that GXemul will
107 not be sufficient. One example is different revisions of ISAs;
108 some instructions which should trigger an exception on a
109 real MIPS processor usually execute anyway in GXemul. Another
110 example is if userland code tries to access kernel memory; in some
111 cases there is protection against this, but not in all cases (to get
112 higher performance).
113 <p>
114 <li>Caches. There is no cache emulation in GXemul right now. Caches
115 for R2000/R3000 are faked well enough to run NetBSD, Ultrix, etc
116 in the DECstation emulation mode, but other than that, cache
117 operations are treated as nops.
118 </ul>
119
120 <p>The bottom line is that GXemul can be useful as yet another way to test
121 your code during development, but it should not be fully relied on.
122
123
124
125
126
127
128 <p><br>
129 <a name="compilercontruct"></a>
130 <h3>Using GXemul in compiler contruction courses:</h3>
131
132 If you are learning how to write a compiler, and wish to target a
133 realistic target platform, then MIPS or ARM (as emulated by GXemul)
134 might be suitable choices.
135
136 <ul>
137 <li><b>(+)</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;Your compiler needs to output real assembly
138 language code, which the assembler (e.g. gas, the GNU assembler) can
139 then compile into object format, and then you need to link this
140 into an executable image. This is much closer to how things work
141 in real life than running assembly language listings in a simulator
142 (e.g. SPIM).
143 <p>
144 <li><b>(-)</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;GXemul does not simulate out-of-order
145 execution, penalties related to instruction scheduling, or
146 load-delays, so it cannot be used to create optimizing compilers
147 that take advantage of such processor features. GXemul keeps
148 track of the number of instructions executed, but that's it.
149 </ul>
150
151
152
153
154
155
156 <p><br>
157 <a name="disk"></a>
158 <h3>How to start the emulator with a disk image:</h3>
159
160 Add <i>-d [prefixes:]diskimagefilename</i> to the command line, where prefixes
161 are one or more single-character options. Run <b>gxemul -h</b>
162 to get a list of possible options.
163
164 <p>
165 Here are some examples. If you want to run a NetBSD/pmax kernel on an
166 emulated DECstation machine, you would use a command line such as this:
167 <pre>
168 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d pmax_diskimage.fs netbsd-pmax-INSTALL</b>
169 </pre>
170
171 <p>NOTE: For some emulation modes, such as the DECstation mode, you do
172 <i>not</i> actually have to specify the name of the kernel, if the disk
173 image is bootable!
174
175 <p>It is possible to have more than one disk. For each -d argument, a disk
176 image is added; the first will be SCSI target 0, the second will be target 1, and so on,
177 unless you specify explicitly which ID number the devices should have.
178 <pre>
179 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d disk0.raw -d disk1.raw -d 5:disk2.raw netbsd-pmax-INSTALL</b>
180 </pre>
181 Note: In the example above, disk2.raw will get scsi id 5.
182
183 <p>If a filename has a 'c' prefix, or ends with ".iso", then it is assumed to be
184 a CDROM device (this can be overridden with a 'd' prefix, to force a read/write disk).
185 For example, the following command would start the emulator with two
186 CDROM images, and one harddisk image:
187 <pre>
188 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d image.iso -d disk0.img -d c:second_cdrom.img netbsd-pmax-INSTALL</b>
189 </pre>
190 Usually, the device with the lowest id becomes the boot device. To override
191 this, add a 'b' prefix to one of the devices:
192 <pre>
193 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d rootdisk.img -d bc:install-cd.iso name_of_kernel</b>
194 </pre>
195 If you have a physical CD-ROM drive on the host machine, say /dev/cd0c, you can
196 use it as a CD-ROM directly accessible from within the emulator:
197 <pre>
198 $ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d rootdisk.img -d bc:/dev/cd0c name_of_kernel</b>
199 </pre>
200 It is probably possible to use harddisks as well this way, but I would not
201 recommend it.
202
203
204
205
206
207
208 <p><br>
209 <a name="tape_images"></a>
210 <h3>How to start the emulator with tape images:</h3>
211
212 Using emulated tape drives is a bit more complicated than disks, because a
213 tape can be made up of several "files" with space in between. The solution
214 I have choosen is to have one file in the host's file system space for each
215 tape file. The prefix for using tapes is 't', and the filename given is
216 for the <i>first</i> file on that tape (number zero, implicitly). For
217 files following file nr 0, a dot and the filenumber is appended to the
218 filename.
219 <p>
220 As an example, starting the emulator with
221 <pre>
222 <b>-d t4:mytape.img</b>
223 </pre>
224 will cause SCSI id 4 to be a tape device, using the following file number
225 to name translation scheme:
226 <p>
227 <center>
228 <table border="0">
229 <tr>
230 <td><b>File number:</b></td>
231 <td><b>File name in the host's filesystem:</b></td>
232 </tr>
233 <tr>
234 <td align="center">0</td>
235 <td align="left">mytape.img</td>
236 </tr>
237 <tr>
238 <td align="center">1</td>
239 <td align="left">mytape.img.1</td>
240 </tr>
241 <tr>
242 <td align="center">2</td>
243 <td align="left">mytape.img.2</td>
244 </tr>
245 <tr>
246 <td align="center">..</td>
247 <td align="left">..</td>
248 </tr>
249 </table>
250 </center>
251 <p>
252 If you already have a number of tape files, which should be placed on the
253 same emulated tape, then you might not want to rename all those files.
254 Use symbolic links instead (ln -s).
255 <p>
256 There is another advantage to using symbolic links for tape filenames:
257 every time a tape is rewound, it is reopened using the filename given
258 on the command line. By changing what the symbolic name points to,
259 you can "switch tapes" without quiting and restarting the emulator.
260
261 <p>
262 <font color="#ff0000">Note: Tape support is most likely very buggy,
263 because it has not been tested much, and has probably also suffered
264 from bit-rot by now.</font>
265
266
267
268
269
270
271 <p><br>
272 <a name="disk_overlays"></a>
273 <h3>How to use disk image overlays:</h3>
274
275 This is most likely best understood by an example:
276
277 <p><ul>
278 <li>Install e.g. <a href="guestoses.html#netbsdcatsinstall">NetBSD/cats</a>.
279 You will end up with a disk image called
280 <tt>nbsd_cats.img</tt>.
281 <p>
282 <li>Running the following command will boot straight from the disk
283 image, with no overlay images:<pre>
284 <b>gxemul -XEcats -d nbsd_cats.img netbsd.aout-GENERIC.gz</b>
285
286 </pre>
287 <li>You may now create an overlay file, a corresponding map file,
288 and start the emulator with the overlay image connected to
289 the same (explicit) ID as the base disk image:<pre>
290 <b>touch overlay.img overlay.img.map
291 gxemul -XEcats -d 0:nbsd_cats.img -d V0:overlay.img netbsd.aout-GENERIC.gz</b>
292
293 </pre>
294 <li>Any changes to the filesystem you perform when using the overlay
295 will only be written to that overlay. For example, to perform
296 a "roll back", you can do the following:<pre>
297 <b>rm -f overlay.img overlay.img.map
298 touch overlay.img overlay.img.map</b>
299
300 </pre>
301 and then simply start the emulator again, with the newly created
302 overlay image.
303 </ul>
304
305 <p>It is also possible to add multiple overlays. In that case, writes
306 always go the the <i>last</i> added overlay.
307
308 <p>GXemul uses Unix' way of supporting files with "holes",
309 so even if <tt>ls -l overlay.img</tt> says that the overlay is several
310 gigabytes large, <tt>du overlay.img</tt> should reveal that only the
311 blocks that have actually been written to have been stored in the
312 overlay, e.g.:<pre>
313 <b>$ ls -l
314 ..
315 -rw-r--r-- 1 debug wheel 3072319488 Mar 24 11:59 nbsd_cats.img
316 -rw-r--r-- 1 debug wheel 2465354 Mar 24 11:44 netbsd.aout-GENERIC.gz
317 -rw-r--r-- 1 debug wheel 2930841600 Mar 24 14:02 overlay.img
318 -rw-r--r-- 1 debug wheel 715538 Mar 24 14:02 overlay.img.map
319 $ du overlay.img
320 864 overlay.img
321 </b>
322 </pre>
323
324 <p>The .map file is simply a raw bitmap telling which blocks of the
325 overlay file that are in use.
326
327
328
329
330
331 <p><br>
332 <a name="filexfer"></a>
333 <h3>Transfering files to/from the guest OS:</h3>
334
335 If the emulated machine supports networking (see <a
336 href="networking.html#intro">this section</a> for more info), then the easiest
337 way to transfer files is probably to use FTP or similar methods.
338
339 <p>There is another way of transfering files which works for any kind of
340 emulated machine which supports disks (either SCSI or IDE). Any file can
341 be supplied as a disk image. For example, consider the following:<pre>
342 $ <b>gxemul -XEcats -d nbsd_cats.img -d archive.tar.gz netbsd-GENERIC</b>
343 </pre>
344 This will start NetBSD/cats with <tt>nbsd_cats.img</tt> as IDE master on
345 controller 0 (wd0), and <tt>archive.tar.gz</tt> as IDE slave on controller
346 0 (wd1). From inside NetBSD, it is now possible to extract the files using
347 the following command:<pre>
348 (inside emulated NetBSD/cats)
349 # <b>tar zxvf /dev/wd1c</b>
350 </pre>
351 Don't worry if NetBSD complains about lack of disklabel; it doesn't
352 matter. On some machines, NetBSD uses <tt>wd1d</tt> instead of
353 <tt>wd1c</tt> for the entire disk.
354 There is also a minor problem: reading the end of the disk image. If you
355 experience problems untaring archives like this, then pad out the archive
356 first with some zeroes.
357
358 <p>Transfering files <i>out</i> from the emulated operating system to the
359 host can be done the same way. First, prepare an empty archive file:<pre>
360 $ <b>dd if=/dev/zero of=newarchive.tar bs=1024 count=1 seek=10000</b>
361 </pre>This example created a 10 MB empty file. Then, start the emulator
362 like this:<pre>
363 $ <b>gxemul -XEcats -d nbsd_cats.img -d archive.tar netbsd-GENERIC</b>
364 </pre>
365 and transfer files by creating an archive directly onto the disk image:<pre>
366 (inside emulated NetBSD/cats)
367 # <b>tar cvf /dev/wd1c filenames</b>
368 </pre>
369 where filenames are the files or directories to transfer.
370
371
372
373
374
375 <p><br>
376 <a name="largeimages"></a>
377 <h3>How to extract large gzipped disk images:</h3>
378
379 Unix filesystems usually support large files with "holes". Holes are
380 zero-filled blocks that don't actually exist on disk. This is very
381 practical for emulated disk images, as it is possible to create a very
382 large disk image without using up much space at all.
383
384 <p>
385 Using gzip and gunzip on disk images can be <i>very</i> slow, as these
386 files can be multiple gigabytes large, but this is usually necessary for
387 transfering disk images over the internet. If you receive a gzipped disk
388 image, say disk.img.gz, and run a naive
389 <p>
390 <pre>
391 $ <b>gunzip disk.img.gz</b>
392 </pre>
393 <p>
394 on it, you will not end up with an optimized file unless
395 gunzip supports that. (In my experiments, it doesn't.) In plain English,
396 if you type <b>ls -l</b> and the filesize is 9 GB, it will actually occupy
397 9 GB of disk space! This is often unacceptable.
398 <p>
399 Using a simple tool which only writes blocks that are non-zero, a lot of
400 space can be saved. Compile the program cp_removeblocks in the
401 experiments/ directory, and type:
402 <p>
403 <pre>
404 $ <b>gunzip -c disk.img.gz | cp_removeblocks /dev/stdin disk.img</b>
405 </pre>
406
407 <p>
408 This will give you a disk.img which looks like it is 9 GB, and works like
409 the real file, but the holes are not written out to the disk. (You can see
410 this by running for example <b>du disk.img</b> to see the physical block
411 count.)
412
413
414
415 <p><br>
416 <a name="userland"></a>
417 <h3>Running userland binaries:</h3>
418
419 <font color="#ff0000">Note: This feature does not really work yet.
420 It is currently disabled in stable release builds of the emulator.</font>
421
422 <p>There is some skeleton code for running userland programs as well. This
423 will not emulate any particular machine, but instead try to translate
424 syscalls from e.g. NetBSD/pmax into the host's OS' syscalls. Right now,
425 this is just a proof-of-concept, to show that it could work; there's lots
426 of work left to do to make it actually run useful programs.
427
428 <p>
429
430 <ul>
431 <li><b>NetBSD/pmax:</b>
432 <br>
433 Running /bin/hostname or /bin/date and similarly trivial
434 programs from the NetBSD/pmax distribution works:<pre>
435 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_hostname</b>
436 tab.csbnet.se
437 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_date</b>
438 Sun Jan 25 02:26:14 GMT 2004
439 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep</b>
440 usage: pmax_bin_sleep seconds
441 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep 5</b>
442 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sync</b>
443 </pre>
444
445 <p>
446 <li><b>Ultrix:</b>
447 <br>
448 At least /bin/date and /bin/hostname work:<pre>
449 $ <b>gxemul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_date</b>
450 UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 54
451 UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 62
452 Mon Feb 9 12:50:59 WET 2004
453 $ <b>gxemul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_hostname</b>
454 tab.csbnet.se
455 </pre>
456
457 <!--
458 <p>
459 <li><b>NetBSD/powerpc:</b>
460 <br>
461 /bin/sync from NetBSD/macppc works, but probably not much else.<pre>
462 $ <b>gxemul -v -u netbsd/powerpc netbsd-1.6.2-macppc-bin-sync</b>
463 ...
464 [ sync() ]
465 [ exit(0) ]
466 cpu_run_deinit(): All CPUs halted.
467
468 </pre>
469
470 <p>
471 <li><b>Linux/PPC64:</b>
472 <br>
473 The <a href="http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-ppc/#h13">64-bit Hello World assembly language example</a>
474 on IBM's developerWorks pages runs:<pre>
475 $ <b>ppc64-unknown-linux-as hello-ppc64.s -o hello-ppc64.o</b>
476 $ <b>ppc64-unknown-linux-ld hello-ppc64.o -o hello-ppc64</b>
477 $ <b>gxemul -q -u linux/ppc64 hello-ppc64</b>
478 Hello, world!
479
480 </pre>
481 -->
482
483 </ul>
484
485
486
487
488
489 <p><br>
490 <a name="promdump"></a>
491 <h3>Using a PROM dump from a real machine:</h3>
492
493 Raw PROM images from real machines can, in a few cases, be used in
494 the emulator. ROM code is usually much more sensitive to correctness
495 of the emulator than operating system kernels or userland programs
496 are, so don't expect any PROM image to just magically work.
497
498
499 <p>
500 <h4>Dumping the PROM on a DECstation 5000/125:</h4>
501 The image first needs to be extracted from the machine. There are
502 several ways to do this.
503 <ul>
504 <li>Use hardware to read the PROM chip(s) directly. Not easy if you
505 don't have such a hardware reader.
506 <li>Copy the PROM memory range into a file, from a running
507 operating system. You need a running OS, and it must
508 have access to the PROM memory range. NetBSD, for example,
509 doesn't allow that from userland.
510 <li>Hook up a serial console and dump using the PROM's own dump
511 command.
512 </ul>
513 <p>
514 The easiest way is to hook up a serial console. The terminal must be
515 able to capture output to a file.
516 <p>
517 These are approximately the commands that I used:
518 <pre>
519 >><b>cnfg</b> <i>Show machine configuration</i>
520
521 >><b>printenv</b> <i>Show environment variables</i>
522
523 >><b>setenv more 0</b> <i>This turns off the More messages</i>
524
525 >><b>e -x 0xbfc00000:0xbfffffff</b> <i>Dump the PROM data</i>
526 </pre>
527 <p>
528 Remember that DECstations are little endian, so if the dump data
529 looks like this:
530 <pre>
531 bfc00000: 0x0bf0007e
532 </pre>
533 then the bytes in memory are actually 0x7e, 0x00, 0xf0, and 0x0b.
534 <p>
535 At 9600 bps, about 10KB can be dumped per minute, so it takes a while.
536 Once enough of the PROM has been dumped, you can press CTRL-C to break out.
537 Then, restore the more environment variable:
538 <pre>
539 >><b>setenv more 24</b>
540 </pre>
541 <p>
542 Now, convert the data you just saved (little-endian words -> bytes),
543 and store in a file. Let's call this file DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin.
544 <pre>
545 $ <b>decprom_dump_txt_to_bin DECstation5000_125_promdump.txt DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin</b>
546 </pre>
547 This binary image can now be used in the emulator:
548 <pre>
549 $ <b>gxemul -e 3min -Q -M128 -q 0xbfc00000:DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin</b>
550
551 KN02-BA V5.7e
552 ?TFL: 3/scc/access (1:Ln1 reg-12: actual=0x00 xpctd=0x01) [KN02-BA]
553 ?TFL: 3/scc/io (1:Ln0 tx bfr not empty. status=0X 0) [KN02-BA]
554 ...
555 --More--?TFL: 3/scsi/cntl (CUX, cause= 1000002C)
556 >><b>?</b>
557 ? [cmd]
558 boot [[-z #] [-n] #/path [ARG...]]
559 cat SCRPT
560 cnfg [#]
561 d [-bhw] [-S #] RNG VAL
562 e [-bhwcdoux] [-S #] RNG
563 erl [-c]
564 go [ADR]
565 init [#] [-m] [ARG...]
566 ls [#]
567 passwd [-c] [-s]
568 printenv [EVN]
569 restart
570 script SCRPT
571 setenv EVN STR
572 sh [-belvS] [SCRPT] [ARG..]
573 t [-l] #/STR [ARG..]
574 unsetenv EVN
575 >><b>cnfg</b>
576 3: KN02-BA DEC V5.7e TCF0 (128 MB)
577 (enet: 00-00-00-00-00-00)
578 (SCSI = 7)
579 0: PMAG-BA DEC V5.3a TCF0
580 >><b>printenv</b>
581 boot=
582 testaction=q
583 haltaction=h
584 more=24
585 #=3
586 console=*
587 osconsole=3
588 >>
589 </pre>
590
591 <p><font color="#ff0000">(Note: at the moment, this doesn't work.
592 I must have broken something when fixing something else, but this
593 is what it looked like at the time.)</font>
594
595 <p>During bootup, the PROM complains <i>a lot</i> about hardware failures.
596 That's because the emulator doesn't emulate the hardware well enough yet.
597
598 <p>The command line options used are: <tt>-e 3min</tt> for
599 "DECstation 3min" (5000/1xx), <tt>-Q</tt> to supress the emulator's own PROM
600 call emulation, <tt>-M128</tt> for 128MB RAM (because GXemul doesn't correctly
601 emulate memory detection well enough for the PROM to accept, so it will
602 always believe there is 128MB ram anyway), and <tt>-q</tt> to supress debug messages.
603 The <tt>0xbfc00000</tt> in front of the filename tells GXemul that it is a raw
604 binary file which should be loaded at a specific virtual address.
605
606
607 <p><br>
608 <h4>Dumping the PROM on a SGI O2:</h4>
609
610 The general ideas in this section applies to using ROM images from other
611 machines as well. I have also tried this on an SGI IP32 ("O2"), in addition
612 to the DECstation.
613
614 <p>For the O2, a suitable command to dump the prom memory range is
615 <pre>
616 &gt;&gt; <b>dump -b 0xBFC00000:0xBFC80000</b>
617 </pre>
618 Make sure you capture all the output (via serial console) into a file,
619 and then run <tt>experiments/sgiprom_to_bin</tt> on the captured file.
620
621 <p>
622 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
623 <a href="sgi-o2-real.jpg"><img src="sgi-o2-real_small.jpg"></a>
624 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
625 <a href="20050817-sgi-o2-success-7.png"><img src="20050817-sgi-o2-success-7_small.png"></a>
626 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
627 <a href="20050817-sgi-o2-success-8.png"><img src="20050817-sgi-o2-success-8_small.png"></a>
628
629 <p>The photo on the left is from the real machine. The other two are
630 screenshots of the PROM running experimentally in GXemul, using <tt>-Y2</tt>
631 framebuffer scaledown.
632
633 <p>Normally during bootup, the IP32 PROM does a Power-On test which makes
634 sure that the caches and other things are working properly. GXemul doesn't
635 emulate all those things well enough for the tests to pass. The
636 experimental screenshots above were taken with cache detection skipped
637 manually.
638
639 <p><font color="#ff0000">
640 In other words: don't expect this to work out-of-the-box with GXemul right
641 now. It might work once I've added correct cache emulation.</font>
642
643 <p>The command line used to start the emulator, once correct cache
644 emulation has been implemented, would be something like <tt>gxemul -XQeo2
645 0xbfc00000:prom.bin</tt>.
646
647 <p>The same caution applies when dealing with SGI PROMs as with
648 DECstation PROMs: GXemul doesn't really emulate the hardware, it only
649 "fakes" devices well enough to fool some things, primarily NetBSD, that
650 it is emulating a real machine. ROM code is usually a <i>lot</i> more
651 picky about the details.
652
653 <p>The graphics used in the O2 is (as far as I know) undocumented. Combining
654 some traces of info from how Linux/O2 draws to the screen with some
655 reverse-engineering of my own, I've implemented enough of the controller to
656 let the PROM draw rectangles and bitmaps, but not much more. The SCSI
657 controller is not implemented yet either.
658
659
660
661
662 </p>
663
664 </body>
665 </html>

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