SoftICE under DOS16, anybody? __/__ Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] intentinoal slowing down qemu - brake

2006-12-01 Thread Martin Bochnig
Johannes Schindelin wrote:

This patch adds support for slowing down qemu and saving cpu load.
  

if you're using the right kernel, QEMU will sleep while there is
nothing to be done.



As was stated by the OP, this is for DOS games. So, there is no nothing 
to be done. Further, you are assuming everybody uses Linux. What makes 
you think so?

Besides, your nice would not do the same thing, you know? You'd need 
_another_ tast _using_ the CPU to slow down QEmu. Which would burn through 
the battery like hell.

Ciao,
Dscho
  


Might something like that help SoftICE for DOS16 to run properly without
freezing the whole guest after one or two ^D's  (i.e. for setting
breakpoints and switching back to the dos command.com)?
WinICE (on DOS386 a.k.a. {win386.exe / chicago's dos386.exe, now called
vmm32.vxd}) does/did already work well, when I last tested this a year
ago, but SoftICE for real mode DOS would always hang the whole guest
when being run inside QEMU (emulation case, not yet tested in case of
x86_x_x86 virtualization).
The same happens when using the Insignia_SoftWindows Pentium-ISA-PC
Emulator on Solaris_sparc, running any version of (MS-/IBM) or DRDOS.
Bochs claims to provide a more accurate emulation than qemu (at the cost
of making it marginally slower), but doesn't fix the SoftICE issue either.

It does - on the other hand - work as expected inside any version of
SunPCi, which only emulates a bit of io and graphics, but uses a
physical x86 cpu, rather than emulating it (I think it doesn't even have
to virtualize it, because nobody else is using the cpu sitting on that
pci card).

Has onybody found a way to work around the SoftICE_for_DOS16
instabilities under qemu?
(btw, my problems *are* qemu-dependant, not caused by an incompatible
himem.sys or anything of that sort / identical diskimages tested under
SunPCi, SoftWindows and qemu_for_SolarisSPARC-Hosts).

Thanks,
Maddin


___
Qemu-devel mailing list
Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel


Re: SoftICE under DOS16, anybody? __/__ Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] intentinoal slowing down qemu - brake

2006-12-01 Thread Martin Bochnig
Martin Bochnig wrote:

Might something like that help SoftICE for DOS16 to run properly without
freezing the whole guest after one or two ^D's  (i.e. for setting
breakpoints and switching back to the dos command.com)?
WinICE (on DOS386 a.k.a. {win386.exe / chicago's dos386.exe, now called
vmm32.vxd}) does/did already work well, when I last tested this a year
ago, but SoftICE for real mode DOS would always hang the whole guest
when being run inside QEMU (emulation case, not yet tested in case of
x86_x_x86 virtualization).
The same happens when using the Insignia_SoftWindows Pentium-ISA-PC
Emulator on Solaris_sparc, running any version of (MS-/IBM) or DRDOS.
Bochs claims to provide a more accurate emulation than qemu (at the cost
of making it marginally slower), but doesn't fix the SoftICE issue either.

It does - on the other hand - work as expected inside any version of
SunPCi, which only emulates a bit of io and graphics, but uses a
physical x86 cpu, rather than emulating it (I think it doesn't even have
to virtualize it, because nobody else is using the cpu sitting on that
pci card).

Has onybody found a way to work around the SoftICE_for_DOS16
instabilities under qemu?
(btw, my problems *are* qemu-dependant, not caused by an incompatible
himem.sys or anything of that sort / identical diskimages tested under
SunPCi, SoftWindows and qemu_for_SolarisSPARC-Hosts).

Thanks,
Maddin




I might some remote day invest a bit of effort into trying to find out
WHY exactly SoftICE_for_realmodeDOS hangs the emulation (under qemu,
bochs and SoftWindows/RealPC) :
Whether or not it freezes somehow internally because of  actually
running, or, more specifically, whether it just has to do with
listening to the keyboard for ^D sequences (int16h and int21h_AH==01 /
see Ralf Brown's grand Interrupt list) to activate the SoftICE UI.
If it is just the latter, then maybe due to a timing related problem,
or maybe because the SoftICE-TSR somehow interferes with COMMAND.COM (or
any shell like i.e. BASH_for_DOS or 4DOS.COM) that are concurrently
listening to kbd input and therefore actively issuing certains DOS-21h
and 16h interrupts permanently (with appropriate values in (E)AL, (E)AL,
or(E)AX, permanently requesting the keyboard, if it has new input in its
associated stdin buffer (not quite correct, simplified).

The issue applies to all major SoftICE_for_realmodeDOS releases/versions.

Thanks.

--
Martin


___
Qemu-devel mailing list
Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel