GXemul: HPCmips emulation

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The HPCmips modes are for emulating "Handheld PCs" based on MIPS processors, such as the MobilePro 770, 780, 800, and 880. It is possible to install and run NetBSD/hpcmips as a guest OS.


NetBSD/hpcmips:

NetBSD/hpcmips can be installed onto a disk image, on an emulated MobilePro. Not all MobilePro models work with all versions of NetBSD, most likely due to bugs in the emulator.

Model: Screen resolution: CPU: RAM: Comments:
MobilePro 770 640x240 VR4121 32 MB Graphical framebuffer (-X) is broken with NetBSD 8.0 but works with 8.1.
MobilePro 780 640x240 VR4121 32 MB Unaligned framebuffer; may run a bit slower.
MobilePro 800 800x600 VR4121 32 MB Graphical framebuffer (-X) is broken with NetBSD 8.0 but works with 8.1.
MobilePro 880 800x600 VR4121 32 MB Graphical framebuffer (-X) is broken with NetBSD 8.0 but works with 8.1. Unaligned framebuffer; may run a bit slower.

These instructions show an example of how to install NetBSD/hpcmips:

  1. Create an empty harddisk image, which will be the root disk that you will install NetBSD/hpcmips onto:
    	dd if=/dev/zero of=nbsd_hpcmips.img bs=1024 count=1 seek=5000000
    
    
  2. Download the NetBSD/hpcmips ISO image, a generic kernel, and the installer kernel (and optional symbols):
    	ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/8.1/NetBSD-8.1-hpcmips.iso
    	ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-8.1/hpcmips/binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gz
    	ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-8.1/hpcmips/installation/netbsd.gz
    	ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-8.1/hpcmips/installation/netbsd.symbols.gz
    

  3. Start the installation like this:
    	gxemul -X -e mobilepro770 -d nbsd_hpcmips.img -d b:NetBSD-8.1-hpcmips.iso netbsd.gz netbsd.symbols.gz
    
    
    and proceed like you would do if you were installing NetBSD on a real MobilePro: Install onto wd0, choose "Use entire disk" when doing the MBR partitioning, and choose to install from CD-ROM. Change the CDROM device name from cd0a to cd0d.

If everything worked, NetBSD should now be installed on the disk image. Use the following command line to boot the emulated hpcmips machine:

	gxemul -e mobilepro770 -X -d nbsd_hpcmips.img netbsd-GENERIC.gz

NOTE: It seems that the NetBSD installer only activates the graphical console. You may need to edit /etc/ttys at the end of the install, and enable /dev/console like this if you wish to be able to log in using serial console:

When the installer says "Exit Install System", select that option to get to a # prompt.

# mount /dev/wd0a /mnt
# echo 'console "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 on secure' >> /mnt/etc/ttys
# umount /mnt
# sync
# halt -p

When you have logged in as root, you can use startx to start X Windows, but there is no mouse or touch support yet, so only keyboard input is available. This makes it a bit meaningless to use X.

If you want to supply raw files such as .tar.gz files as disk images using the -d command line option, those are accessible as the 'd' partition in NetBSD/hpcmips, not c. So for example:

	tar zxvf /dev/wd1d

would extract files if the disk image is a .tar.gz archive.