Brian D. Horn wrote: >>> >>> >>> The current port uses a virtual firmware; create a bootable binary of >>> VOF and let qemu-ppc boot from that, and it will bring the OF prompt >>> (hopefully), and from there solaris kernel can be loaded and booted. >>> but there probably lots of device issues here and it may turn out not >>> worth to go this way. >>> >> >> Sure. >> I had the same idea a while ago. But it is not even possible to boot >> the historic VOF (from Solaris 2.5/2.5.1/2.6) inside qemu or PearPC. >> Neither VOF1.0, nor VOF 2.0 . >> For several reasons :-( >> > And those reasons are...? It might be useful to know the deficiencies > of Qemu for evaluation > purposes.
qemu-system-ppc lacks (or lacked) support for booting from a floppy. Further, I had been a qemu maintainer at csw since 2004 http://www.blastwave.org/packages/CSWqemu http://www.blastwave.org/maintainers/bochnig and then at opensol since 2006 http://opensolaris.org/os/project/qemu/leaders/ . In fact I have even done a small part (Juergen Keil did the bigger chunk) of getting it ported to SPARC hosts. You always run into new incompatibilities, odd behaviour of guest code, even on x86 (which is the best supported emulation target), not even thinking about ppc. I cannot recommend qemu for what you are dreaming of how you might use it. It will disappoint you. If you dont believe me allow me a question: Did you try it yourself? If so, what were the results? -- Cheers, MBO
