GXemul: PowerPC Macintosh emulation

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The macppc mode in GXemul tries to emulate a generic "G4" PowerPC Macintosh, in order to run NetBSD/macppc and eventually other guest OSes.


NetBSD/macppc:

It is possible to install and run NetBSD/macppc in GXemul on an emulated generic PowerPC machine. No specific Machintosh model is emulated, but it is enough to for NetBSD to recognize it.

To install NetBSD/macppc onto a disk image, follow these instructions:

  1. Create an empty harddisk image, which will be the root disk that you will install NetBSD/macppc onto:
        dd if=/dev/zero of=nbsd_macppc.img bs=1024 count=1 seek=3000000
    
    
  2. Download the NetBSD/macppc 4.0.1 ISO image and a generic kernel:
        ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/4.0.1/macppccd-4.0.1.iso
        ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-4.0.1/macppc/binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.MP.gz
    
    

  3. Start the installation like this:
        gxemul -x -e g4 -d nbsd_macppc.img -d b:macppccd-4.0.1.iso -j macppc/binary/kernel/netbsd-INSTALL
    
    
    and continue as you would do when installing NetBSD on a real machine.

If everything worked, NetBSD/macppc should now be installed on the disk image.

Use the following command line to boot the emulated machine:

	gxemul -x -e g4 -d nbsd_macppc.img netbsd-GENERIC.MP.gz

If asked about root device, enter wd0.


HelenOS/ppc:

This does not work yet!

  1. Download the HelenOS PPC ISO image:
    	http://www.helenos.org/releases/HelenOS-0.7.1-ppc32.iso
      
  2. Start GXemul using the following command line:
      	gxemul -M 256 -v -x -e g4 -d HelenOS-0.7.1-ppc32.iso  -j BOOT/image.boot