Thanks Natalia, I'll start by answering the insultive part of your answer, as my ego will not let me go on if I don't:
I am not "begging on all the internet", I am simply seeking solutions, help and advice, and making sure to update whoever is interested in the progress I am doing. Also, I wish to thank you for your insight and well detailed answer. Finally I got an explanation as to _why_ solution A will not be as good as solution B. That is what I call a winning argument, and I thank you for that. I already have people searching for Adaptec docs and programmers for the creation of the driver, err, emulated device. Take care, Adam On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Natalia Portillo <clau...@claunia.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I've read all your posts in the QEMU mailing list and the TUHS one and I'm > answering to both lists in a hope my mail enlights you and any other curious. > > First of all, old UNIX systems (and I put my hand on the fire for DG/UX > also), use a monolithic linked at setup/later time kernel. > That is, even if you get a driver (IDE, virtio, whatsoever), the > configuration files, the kernel, the ramdisk, everything that lets your > system boot, MUST HAVE BEEN BOOT from the AIC controller, the driver is > hardcoded, no way to change it. > > If you have extensive knowledge of what files a driver setup modifies on > DG/UX specifically (knowledge from other UNIX, forget it, they are as > different as Porsche and Ferrari motors), you can always get a new kernel > with the drivers you need to make it boot and manually put them in your image. > > In the case, you meet this requirements, and, you do it, you can then achieve > to other problems. The DG/UX workstations are x86 machines, but nothing > swears they are PC compatible machines, and they can have a different memory > map for some critical device, or include critical devices never found in a PC > (like an Intel Macintosh does for example). Just booting from a BIOS doesn't > make the machines be the same (PowerPC Macintosh, IBM POWER workstations, > Genesi Pegasos, are machines that boot OpenFirmware with heavily different > configurations, devices and memory maps). > > Also, you are assuming IDE is available in DG/UX just because the controller > is present in the hardware. That hardware was also used for Windows NT. IDE > support can be JUST FOR Windows, and the DG/UX manufacturer just decided to > not include an IDE driver in the kernel (happened in AIX for PCs until last > version of all, only SCSI was supported, being a hugely strange controller in > PC worlds). > > In the case you opt for making a driver (adding IDE, virtio, or other SCSI > support) for the DG/UX need to say you need, low level knowledge of the > hardware, low level knowledge of the operating system, a working machine (for > sure, with the hardware available), a debug machine (almost sure also), C and > maybe assembler knowledge. In a scale of 10, this puts the difficulty in 8 > for most of programmers, and surely if you were one you stacked with the > first option everyone gave you (see next sentence). > > The easiest way, and the one that people answered you already in QEMU's > mailing list (in a scale of 10 the difficulty is 6 or even 5), is creating an > emulated device (that's the correct term, not "driver") for an emulator, like > QEMU, Bochs, VirtualBox (forget this option for VMWare, VirtualPC or > Parallels) that adds the AIC SCSI controller you exactly need. > > Why is this easiest? You don't need any DG/UX working system, you don't need > to know how DG/UX works, you don't need to compile a kernel, copy it to your > image. > > You just take the Adaptec's documentation, and start coding, making a SCSI > emulated controller, and testing it with systems you can always reinstall, > debug, and check, until they fully work (Windows, Linux, BSD, take your > choice). > > And then, you just polish it until your DG/UX boots, or finds the memory map > as a mess it doesnt like. > > Finally, please stop begging on all the internet, spend that time coding the > driver or getting the money to pay a programmer that will do. > > Sincerely yours, > Natalia Portillo > Claunia.com CEO > QEMU's Official OS Support List maintainer