Hi Peter,
I think qemu on OpenBSD/macppc will not help you as this will be still
using tcg IMHO. What you would need is something like Linux on PPC64 and
running KVM there and then IMHO you will be able to run PPC code
directly on CPU avoiding possible Qemu issues in PPC isns backend.
See following URLs about how to run Mac OS X for PPC on top of Qemu/KVM
on POWER9/Linux box:
https://www.talospace.com/2018/08/making-your-talos-ii-into-power-mac.html
https://www.talospace.com/2018/08/making-your-talos-ii-into-power-mac_29.html
I have POWER8 + Linux + KVM box here which is kind of working well since
in Qemu/KVM I'm running various Linuxes and FreeBSD 13-current. If you
like to have something tested there, I'm open to it, either will do it
myself or I'll give you account on the box.
Yet another possibility would be to ask RaptorCS since they promised
several times bare-metal access to POWER9 box to OS porters.
Could you be also so kind and share information about how do you build
OpenBSD for PPC64 and how do you boot whatever you get from the build.
I'm especially curious if you build bsd.rd and somehow boot that and how
exactly do you invoke Qemu and also what Qemu version exactly do you use
for that.
Thanks,
Karel
On 5/25/19 2:07 AM, Peter J. Philipp wrote:
Hi,
Last week I worked a bit on my powerpc64 port and I ran into some trouble.
I'll try to formulate what that trouble was in another post (maybe) in the
next few days but I just have this question: How can I use Qemu better?
I'm using the 970FX emulation with 1 cpu for now and I'm running into some
LR register corruption, and at first glance it seems the asm is alright (in
that it saves LR on the stack after a mflr, and pops the stack later and
restores LR with mtlr.
Would it be beneficial to use Qemu on the macppc arch instead of the amd64
arch or doesn't it matter? One good thing with the amd64 arch is that I can
take my work along on weekends to my parents house, where i have no access to
the G5. I'm not letting the G5 idle at 140 Watts.
The 6.5 macppc qemu is broken, so I'll have to take my G5 to -current perhaps
to see if I can get qemu to compile.
Another thing with Qemu that I have problems with is the entire 'show
registers' output in the monitor, it doesn't feel like it correctly displays
right data.
I have also used the x (examine) function in the monitor which is like the gdb
memory examination. Is there any other monitor commands that you might have
experience with that are a really good debug tool?
Regards,
-peter
