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$Id: HISTORY,v 1.1613 2007/06/15 20:11:26 debug Exp $
20070501	Continuing a little on m88k disassembly (control registers,
		more instructions).
		Adding a dummy mvme88k machine mode.
20070502	Re-adding MIPS load/store alignment exceptions.
20070503	Implementing more of the M88K disassembly code.
20070504	Adding disassembly of some more M88K load/store instructions.
		Implementing some relatively simple M88K instructions (br.n,
		xor[.u] imm, and[.u] imm).
20070505	Implementing M88K three-register and, or, xor, and jmp[.n],
		bsr[.n] including function call trace stuff.
		Applying a patch from Bruce M. Simpson which implements the
		SYSCON_BOARD_CPU_CLOCK_FREQ_ID object of the syscon call in
		the yamon PROM emulation.
20070506	Implementing M88K bb0[.n] and bb1[.n], and skeletons for
		ldcr and stcr (although no control regs are implemented yet).
20070509	Found and fixed the bug which caused Linux for QEMU_MIPS to
		stop working in 0.4.5.1: It was a faulty change to the MIPS
		'sc' and 'scd' instructions I made while going through gcc -W
		warnings on 20070428.
20070510	Updating the Linux/QEMU_MIPS section in guestoses.html to
		use mips-test-0.2.tar.gz instead of 0.1.
		A big thank you to Miod Vallat for sending me M88K manuals.
		Implementing more M88K instructions (addu, subu, div[u], mulu,
		ext[u], clr, set, cmp).
20070511	Fixing bugs in the M88K "and" and "and.u" instructions (found
		by comparing against the manual).
		Implementing more M88K instructions (mask[.u], mak, bcnd (auto-
		generated)) and some more control register details.
		Cleanup: Removing the experimental AVR emulation mode and
		corresponding devices; AVR emulation wasn't really meaningful.
		Implementing autogeneration of most M88K loads/stores. The
		rectangle drawing demo (with -O0) for M88K runs :-)
		Beginning on M88K exception handling.
		More M88K instructions: tb0, tb1, rte, sub, jsr[.n].
		Adding some skeleton MVME PROM ("BUG") emulation.
20070512	Fixing a bug in the M88K cmp instruction.
		Adding the M88K lda (scaled register) instruction.
		Fixing bugs in 64-bit (32-bit pairs) M88K loads/stores.
		Removing the unused tick_hz stuff from the machine struct.
		Implementing the M88K xmem instruction. OpenBSD/mvme88k gets
		far enough to display the Copyright banner :-)
		Implementing subu.co (guess), addu.co, addu.ci, ff0, and ff1.
		Adding a dev_mvme187, for MVME187-specific devices/registers.
		OpenBSD/mvme88k prints more boot messages. :)
20070515	Continuing on MVME187 emulation (adding more devices, beginning
		on the CMMUs, etc).
		Adding the M88K and.c, xor.c, and or.c instructions, and making
		sure that mul, div, etc cause exceptions if executed when SFD1
		is disabled.
20070517	Continuing on M88K and MVME187 emulation in general; moving
		the CMMU registers to the CPU struct, separating dev_pcc2 from
		dev_mvme187, and beginning on memory_m88k.c (BATC and PATC).
		Fixing a bug in 64-bit (32-bit pairs) M88K fast stores.
		Implementing the clock part of dev_mk48txx.
		Implementing the M88K fstcr and xcr instructions.
		Implementing m88k_cpu_tlbdump().
		Beginning on the implementation of a separate address space
		for M88K .usr loads/stores.
20070520	Removing the non-working (skeleton) Sandpoint, SonyNEWS, SHARK
		Dnard, and Zaurus machine modes.
		Experimenting with dyntrans to_be_translated read-ahead. It
		seems to give a very small performance increase for MIPS
		emulation, but a large performance degradation for SuperH. Hm.
20070522	Disabling correct SuperH ITLB emulation; it does not seem to be
		necessary in order to let SH4 guest OSes run, and it slows down
		userspace code.
		Implementing "samepage" branches for SuperH emulation, and some
		other minor speed hacks.
20070525	Continuing on M88K memory-related stuff: exceptions, memory
		transaction register contents, etc.
		Implementing the M88K subu.ci instruction.
		Removing the non-working (skeleton) Iyonix machine mode.
		OpenBSD/mvme88k reaches userland :-), starts executing
		/sbin/init's instructions, and issues a few syscalls, before
		crashing.
20070526	Fixing bugs in dev_mk48txx, so that OpenBSD/mvme88k detects
		the correct time-of-day.
		Implementing a generic IRQ controller for the test machines
		(dev_irqc), similar to a proposed patch from Petr Stepan.
		Experimenting some more with translation read-ahead.
		Adding an "expect" script for automated OpenBSD/landisk
		install regression/performance tests.
20070527	Adding a dummy mmEye (SH3) machine mode skeleton.
		FINALLY found the strange M88K bug I have been hunting: I had
		not emulated the SNIP value for exceptions occurring in
		branch delay slots correctly.
		Implementing correct exceptions for 64-bit M88K loads/stores.
		Address to symbol lookups are now disabled when M88K is
		running in usermode (because usermode addresses don't have
		anything to do with supervisor addresses).
20070531	Removing the mmEye machine mode skeleton.
20070604	Some minor code cleanup.
20070605	Moving src/useremul.c into a subdir (src/useremul/), and
		cleaning up some more legacy constructs.
		Adding -Wstrict-aliasing and -fstrict-aliasing detection to
		the configure script.
20070606	Adding a check for broken GCC on Solaris to the configure
		script. (GCC 3.4.3 on Solaris cannot handle static variables
		which are initialized to 0 or NULL. :-/)
		Removing the old (non-working) ARC emulation modes: NEC RD94,
		R94, R96, and R98, and the last traces of Olivetti M700 and
		Deskstation Tyne.
		Removing the non-working skeleton WDSC device (dev_wdsc).
20070607	Thinking about how to use the host's cc + ld at runtime to
		generate native code. (See experiments/native_cc_ld_test.i
		for an example.)
20070608	Adding a program counter sampling timer, which could be useful
		for native code generation experiments.
		The KN02_CSR_NRMMOD bit in the DECstation 5000/200 (KN02) CSR
		should always be set, to allow a 5000/200 PROM to boot.
20070609	Moving out breakpoint details from the machine struct into
		a helper struct, and removing the limit on max nr of
		breakpoints.
20070610	Moving out tick functions into a helper struct as well (which
		also gets rid of the max limit).
20070612	FINALLY figured out why Debian/DECstation stopped working when
		translation read-ahead was enabled: in src/memory_rw.c, the
		call to invalidate_code_translation was made also if the
		memory access was an instruction load (if the page was mapped
		as writable); it shouldn't be called in that case.
20070613	Implementing some more MIPS32/64 revision 2 instructions: di,
		ei, ext, dext, dextm, dextu, and ins.
20070614	Implementing an instruction combination for the NetBSD/arm
		idle loop (making the host not use any cpu if NetBSD/arm
		inside the emulator is not using any cpu).
		Increasing the nr of ARM VPH entries from 128 to 384.
20070615	Removing the ENABLE_arch stuff from the configure script, so
		that all included architectures are included in both release
		and development builds.
		Moving memory related helper functions from misc.c to memory.c.
		Adding preliminary instructions for netbooting NetBSD/pmppc to
		guestoses.html; it doesn't work yet, there are weird timeouts.
		Beginning a total rewrite of the userland emulation modes
		(removing all emulation modes, beginning from scratch with
		NetBSD/MIPS and FreeBSD/Alpha only).
20070616	After fixing a bug in the DEC21143 NIC (the TDSTAT_OWN bit was
		only cleared for the last segment when transmitting, not all
		segments), NetBSD/pmppc boots with root-on-nfs without the
		timeouts. Updating guestoses.html.
		Removing the skeleton PSP (Playstation Portable) mode.
		Moving X11-related stuff in the machine struct into a helper
		struct.
		Cleanup of out-of-memory checks, to use a new CHECK_ALLOCATION
		macro (which prints a meaningful error message).
		Adding a COMMENT to each machine and device (for automagic
		.index comment generation).
		Doing regression testing for the next release.

==============  RELEASE 0.4.6  ==============


1 <html><head><title>Gavare's eXperimental Emulator:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Miscellaneous</title>
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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 <!--
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15 Copyright (C) 2003-2007 Anders Gavare. All rights reserved.
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18 modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
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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"><b>NOTE 2007-06-15:</b> I just removed most of the
420 userland (syscall) emulation support, and started a rewrite from scratch.
421 The rest of this section in the documentation is not currently valid.</font>
422
423 <p>There is some skeleton code for running userland programs as well. This
424 will not emulate any particular machine, but instead try to translate
425 syscalls from e.g. NetBSD/pmax into the host's OS' syscalls. Right now,
426 this is just a proof-of-concept, to show that it could work; there's lots
427 of work left to do to make it actually run useful programs.
428
429 <p>
430
431 <ul>
432 <li><b>NetBSD/pmax:</b>
433 <br>
434 Running /bin/hostname or /bin/date and similarly trivial
435 programs from the NetBSD/pmax distribution works:<pre>
436 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_hostname</b>
437 tab.csbnet.se
438 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_date</b>
439 Sun Jan 25 02:26:14 GMT 2004
440 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep</b>
441 usage: pmax_bin_sleep seconds
442 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep 5</b>
443 $ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sync</b>
444 </pre>
445
446 <p>
447 <li><b>Ultrix:</b>
448 <br>
449 At least /bin/date and /bin/hostname work:<pre>
450 $ <b>gxemul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_date</b>
451 UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 54
452 UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 62
453 Mon Feb 9 12:50:59 WET 2004
454 $ <b>gxemul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_hostname</b>
455 tab.csbnet.se
456 </pre>
457
458 <!--
459 <p>
460 <li><b>NetBSD/powerpc:</b>
461 <br>
462 /bin/sync from NetBSD/macppc works, but probably not much else.<pre>
463 $ <b>gxemul -v -u netbsd/powerpc netbsd-1.6.2-macppc-bin-sync</b>
464 ...
465 [ sync() ]
466 [ exit(0) ]
467 cpu_run_deinit(): All CPUs halted.
468
469 </pre>
470
471 <p>
472 <li><b>Linux/PPC64:</b>
473 <br>
474 The <a href="http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-ppc/#h13">64-bit Hello World assembly language example</a>
475 on IBM's developerWorks pages runs:<pre>
476 $ <b>ppc64-unknown-linux-as hello-ppc64.s -o hello-ppc64.o</b>
477 $ <b>ppc64-unknown-linux-ld hello-ppc64.o -o hello-ppc64</b>
478 $ <b>gxemul -q -u linux/ppc64 hello-ppc64</b>
479 Hello, world!
480
481 </pre>
482 -->
483
484 </ul>
485
486
487
488
489
490 <p><br>
491 <a name="promdump"></a>
492 <h3>Using a PROM dump from a real machine:</h3>
493
494 Raw PROM images from real machines can, in a few cases, be used in
495 the emulator. ROM code is usually much more sensitive to correctness
496 of the emulator than operating system kernels or userland programs
497 are, so don't expect any PROM image to just magically work.
498
499
500 <p>
501 <h4>Dumping the PROM on a DECstation 5000/125:</h4>
502 The image first needs to be extracted from the machine. There are
503 several ways to do this.
504 <ul>
505 <li>Use hardware to read the PROM chip(s) directly. Not easy if you
506 don't have such a hardware reader.
507 <li>Copy the PROM memory range into a file, from a running
508 operating system. You need a running OS, and it must
509 have access to the PROM memory range. NetBSD, for example,
510 doesn't allow that from userland.
511 <li>Hook up a serial console and dump using the PROM's own dump
512 command.
513 </ul>
514 <p>
515 The easiest way is to hook up a serial console. The terminal must be
516 able to capture output to a file.
517 <p>
518 These are approximately the commands that I used:
519 <pre>
520 >><b>cnfg</b> <i>Show machine configuration</i>
521
522 >><b>printenv</b> <i>Show environment variables</i>
523
524 >><b>setenv more 0</b> <i>This turns off the More messages</i>
525
526 >><b>e -x 0xbfc00000:0xbfffffff</b> <i>Dump the PROM data</i>
527 </pre>
528 <p>
529 Remember that DECstations are little endian, so if the dump data
530 looks like this:
531 <pre>
532 bfc00000: 0x0bf0007e
533 </pre>
534 then the bytes in memory are actually 0x7e, 0x00, 0xf0, and 0x0b.
535 <p>
536 At 9600 bps, about 10KB can be dumped per minute, so it takes a while.
537 Once enough of the PROM has been dumped, you can press CTRL-C to break out.
538 Then, restore the more environment variable:
539 <pre>
540 >><b>setenv more 24</b>
541 </pre>
542 <p>
543 Now, convert the data you just saved (little-endian words -> bytes),
544 and store in a file. Let's call this file DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin.
545 <pre>
546 $ <b>decprom_dump_txt_to_bin DECstation5000_125_promdump.txt DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin</b>
547 </pre>
548 This binary image can now be used in the emulator:
549 <pre>
550 $ <b>gxemul -e 3min -Q -M128 -q 0xbfc00000:DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin</b>
551
552 KN02-BA V5.7e
553 ?TFL: 3/scc/access (1:Ln1 reg-12: actual=0x00 xpctd=0x01) [KN02-BA]
554 ?TFL: 3/scc/io (1:Ln0 tx bfr not empty. status=0X 0) [KN02-BA]
555 ...
556 --More--?TFL: 3/scsi/cntl (CUX, cause= 1000002C)
557 >><b>?</b>
558 ? [cmd]
559 boot [[-z #] [-n] #/path [ARG...]]
560 cat SCRPT
561 cnfg [#]
562 d [-bhw] [-S #] RNG VAL
563 e [-bhwcdoux] [-S #] RNG
564 erl [-c]
565 go [ADR]
566 init [#] [-m] [ARG...]
567 ls [#]
568 passwd [-c] [-s]
569 printenv [EVN]
570 restart
571 script SCRPT
572 setenv EVN STR
573 sh [-belvS] [SCRPT] [ARG..]
574 t [-l] #/STR [ARG..]
575 unsetenv EVN
576 >><b>cnfg</b>
577 3: KN02-BA DEC V5.7e TCF0 (128 MB)
578 (enet: 00-00-00-00-00-00)
579 (SCSI = 7)
580 0: PMAG-BA DEC V5.3a TCF0
581 >><b>printenv</b>
582 boot=
583 testaction=q
584 haltaction=h
585 more=24
586 #=3
587 console=*
588 osconsole=3
589 >>
590 </pre>
591
592 <p><font color="#ff0000">(Note: at the moment, this doesn't work.
593 I must have broken something when fixing something else, but this
594 is what it looked like at the time.)</font>
595
596 <p>During bootup, the PROM complains <i>a lot</i> about hardware failures.
597 That's because the emulator doesn't emulate the hardware well enough yet.
598
599 <p>The command line options used are: <tt>-e 3min</tt> for
600 "DECstation 3min" (5000/1xx), <tt>-Q</tt> to supress the emulator's own PROM
601 call emulation, <tt>-M128</tt> for 128MB RAM (because GXemul doesn't correctly
602 emulate memory detection well enough for the PROM to accept, so it will
603 always believe there is 128MB ram anyway), and <tt>-q</tt> to supress debug messages.
604 The <tt>0xbfc00000</tt> in front of the filename tells GXemul that it is a raw
605 binary file which should be loaded at a specific virtual address.
606
607
608 <p><br>
609 <a name="promdump_o2"><h4>Dumping the PROM on a SGI O2:</h4></a>
610
611 The general ideas in this section applies to using ROM images from other
612 machines as well. I have also tried this on an SGI IP32 ("O2"), in addition
613 to the DECstation.
614
615 <p>For the O2, a suitable command to dump the prom memory range is
616 <pre>
617 &gt;&gt; <b>dump -b 0xBFC00000:0xBFC80000</b>
618 </pre>
619 Make sure you capture all the output (via serial console) into a file,
620 and then run <tt>experiments/sgiprom_to_bin</tt> on the captured file.
621
622 <p>
623 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
624 <a href="sgi-o2-real.jpg"><img src="sgi-o2-real_small.jpg"></a>
625 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
626 <a href="20050817-sgi-o2-success-7.png"><img src="20050817-sgi-o2-success-7_small.png"></a>
627 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
628 <a href="20050817-sgi-o2-success-8.png"><img src="20050817-sgi-o2-success-8_small.png"></a>
629
630 <p>The photo on the left is from the real machine. The other two are
631 screenshots of the PROM running experimentally in GXemul, using <tt>-Y2</tt>
632 framebuffer scaledown.
633
634 <p>Normally during bootup, the IP32 PROM does a Power-On test which makes
635 sure that the caches and other things are working properly. GXemul doesn't
636 emulate all those things well enough for the tests to pass. The
637 experimental screenshots above were taken with cache detection skipped
638 manually.
639
640 <p><font color="#ff0000">
641 In other words: don't expect this to work out-of-the-box with GXemul right
642 now. It might work once I've added correct cache emulation.</font>
643
644 <p>The command line used to start the emulator, once correct cache
645 emulation has been implemented, would be something like <tt>gxemul -XQeo2
646 0xbfc00000:prom.bin</tt>.
647
648 <p>The same caution applies when dealing with SGI PROMs as with
649 DECstation PROMs: GXemul doesn't really emulate the hardware, it only
650 "fakes" devices well enough to fool some things, primarily NetBSD, that
651 it is emulating a real machine. ROM code is usually a <i>lot</i> more
652 picky about the details.
653
654 <p>The graphics used in the O2 is (as far as I know) undocumented. Combining
655 some traces of info from how Linux/O2 draws to the screen with some
656 reverse-engineering of my own, I've implemented enough of the controller to
657 let the PROM draw rectangles and bitmaps, but not much more. The SCSI
658 controller is not implemented yet either.
659
660
661
662
663 </p>
664
665 </body>
666 </html>

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