Is that still a problem? What was the exact error? I quickly tried the 3.1.2a on qemu 0.12.4 (with and without KVM) and I could easily login.
** Changed in: qemu Status: New => Incomplete -- MINIX 3 won't boot in qemu 0.9.1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/267542 You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. Status in QEMU: Incomplete Bug description: CD Image 3.1.2a was downloaded from http://www.minix3.org/download/ It booted with previous version of qemu but hangs at startup with 0.9.1. Hardware acceleration is disabled. Please ask if there is other information I can give you.