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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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<h1>GXemul: ARC (MIPS) emulation</h1>
<p>
<a href="./">Back to the index.</a>
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<p>ARC was an attempt to make a standard for RISC-based machines.
It is not very meaningful today, but it is of historical interest.
SGI machines used a variant of ARC firmware, called ARCS, and Windows NT
used ARC-based paths for hardware devices during bootup.
<p>The ARC machine best emulated in GXemul is a PICA-61. It is not very
stable, but at least it is possible to run NetBSD in it.
<p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#netbsdarcinstall">NetBSD/arc</a>
</ul>
<p>There are also some installation notes for operating systems that
do not really work yet:
<p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#openbsdarcinstall"><font color="red"><small>OpenBSD/arc</small></font></a>
<li><a href="#windows_nt_mips"><font color="red"><small>Windows NT for MIPS</small></font></a>
</ul>
<p><br>
<a name="netbsdarcinstall"></a>
<h3>NetBSD/arc:</h3>
<p>It is possible to install and run <a href="http://www.netbsd.org/ports/arc/">NetBSD/arc</a>
on an emulated Acer PICA-61 in the emulator.
<p>
<a href="20041024-netbsd-arc-installed.gif"><img src="20041024-netbsd-arc-installed_small.gif"></a>
<p>
To install NetBSD/arc from a CDROM image onto an emulated
harddisk image, follow these instructions:
<p>
<ol start="1">
<li>Create an empty harddisk image, which will be the root disk
that NetBSD installs itself onto:<pre>
<b>dd if=/dev/zero of=nbsd_arc.img bs=1024 count=1 seek=2000000</b>
</pre>
<li>Download a NetBSD/arc CDROM image, and the generic + ramdisk NetBSD/arc kernels:<pre>
<a href="ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-7.1.2/iso/NetBSD-7.1.2-arc.iso">ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-7.1.2/iso/NetBSD-7.1.2-arc.iso</a>
<a href="ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-7.1.2/arc/binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gz">ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-7.1.2/arc/binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gz</a>
<a href="ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-7.1.2/arc/binary/kernel/netbsd-RAMDISK.gz">ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-7.1.2/arc/binary/kernel/netbsd-RAMDISK.gz</a>
</pre>
<li>Start the emulator using this command line:<pre>
<b>gxemul -x -e pica -d nbsd_arc.img -d b:NetBSD-7.1.2-arc.iso netbsd-RAMDISK.gz</b>
</pre>
and proceed like you would do if you were installing NetBSD on a real
PICA-61. (Choose "Use entire disk" when doing the MBR partitioning,
and choose to install from CD-ROM.)
<p>
(Use <tt>-X</tt> if you feel more comfortable with a "graphical" text
display.)
<p>
</ol>
<p>You can now use the generic NetBSD/arc kernel to boot from the harddisk
image, using the following command:<pre>
<b>gxemul -x -e pica -d nbsd_arc.img netbsd-GENERIC.gz</b>
</pre>
<p>Known issue: The clock may be running too fast inside the emulated machine.
<p><br>
<a name="openbsdarcinstall"></a>
<h3>OpenBSD/arc:</h3>
<p>It is <i>almost</i> possible to install and run OpenBSD/arc on an emulated Acer
PICA-61 in the emulator.
<p><font color="#e00000">Earlier, I had this guest OS listed as
officially working in the emulator, but for several reasons, it has
been moved down here to the "informative-but-not-really-working"
section.</font>
<p>
<ul>
<li>The last OpenBSD/arc release was 2.3. This means that it is very
old, it would not give a fair picture of what OpenBSD is (if you
are just looking to find out what it is like), and it is not
worth experimenting with it. See
<a href="http://www.openbsd.org/arc.html">http://www.openbsd.org/arc.html</a>
for more information.
<li>OpenBSD/arc was (if I understood things correctly) never really
stable, even on real hardare. Problems with too small an interrupt
stack. Bugs are triggered in the emulator that have to do with
issues such as this.
</ul>
<p>
<a href="20041024-openbsd-arc-installed.gif"><img src="20041024-openbsd-arc-installed_small.gif"></a>
<p>
<font color="#e00000">Currently, I don't test for every release whether
or not OpenBSD/arc can be installed. Releases prior to 0.3.7
(but probably <i>not</i> 0.3.7) should work. Anyway, here are the
old installation instructions:</font>
<p>To install OpenBSD/arc onto an emulated harddisk image, follow these
instructions:
<p>
<ol>
<li>Create an empty harddisk image, which will be the root disk
that OpenBSD installs itself onto:<pre>
<b>dd if=/dev/zero of=obsd_arc.img bs=1024 count=1 seek=700000</b>
</pre>
<li>Download the entire arc directory from the ftp server: (approx. 75 MB)<pre>
<b>wget -np -l 0 -r <a href="https://ftp.nluug.nl/OpenBSD/2.3/arc/">https://ftp.nluug.nl/OpenBSD/2.3/arc/</a></b>
</pre>
<li>You now need to make an ISO image of the entire directory you downloaded.
(I recommend using <tt>mkisofs</tt> for that purpose. If you don't
already have <tt>mkisofs</tt> installed on your system, you need
to install it in order to do this.)<pre>
<b>mkisofs -o openbsd_arc_2.3.iso ftp.nluug.nl/OpenBSD/</b>
</pre>
<li>Start the emulator using this command line:<pre>
<b>gxemul -e pica -X -d obsd_arc.img -d b:openbsd_arc_2.3.iso -j 2.3/arc/bsd.rd</b>
</pre>
<p>and proceed like you would do if you were installing OpenBSD
on a real Acer PICA-61. (Answer 'no' when asked if you want to
configure networking, and then install from CD-ROM.)
</ol>
<p>Once the install has finished, the following command should let you
boot from the harddisk image:
<p>
<pre>
<b>gxemul -X -e pica -d obsd_arc.img ftp.nluug.nl/OpenBSD/2.3/arc/bsd</b>
</pre>
<p>The system is very sensitive to (I think) kernel stack overflow, so it
crashes easily. If I remember correctly from mailing lists, this also
happened on real hardware.
<p><br>
<a name="windows_nt_mips"></a>
<h3>Windows NT for MIPS:</h3>
<p>Old versions of Windows NT could run on ARC MIPS hardware, such as
the PICA 61. It is theoretically possible that the emulation provided by
GXemul some day could be stable/complete enough to emulate
such hardware well enough to fool Windows NT into thinking
that it is running on a real machine.
<font color="#ff0000">IT DOES <b>NOT</b> WORK YET!</font>
<p>
<a href="20190528-winnt-arc-mips-video-fail.png"><img src="20190528-winnt-arc-mips-video-fail_small.png"></a>
<p>Installation steps similar to these would be required to install
Windows NT onto a disk image:
<ol>
<li>Put a "Windows NT 4.0 for MIPS" CDROM (or similar) into
your CDROM drive. (On FreeBSD systems, it is
usually called <tt>/dev/cd0c</tt> or similar. Change
that to whatever the CDROM is called on your system,
or the name of a raw .iso image. I have tried this
with the Swedish version, but it might work with
other versions too.)
<p>
<li>Create an empty harddisk image, which will be the disk image
that you will install Windows NT onto:<pre>
<b><tt>dd if=/dev/zero of=winnt_test.img bs=1024 count=1 seek=999000</tt></b>
</pre>
<li>Run the ARC installer, to partition the disk image:<pre>
<b><tt>gxemul -X -e pica -d winnt_test.img -d bc6:/dev/cd0c -j MIPS\\ARCINST</tt></b>
</pre>
Note that <tt>ARCINST</tt> <i>almost</i> works, but not quite.
<p>
<li>Run the SETUP program:<pre>
<b><tt>gxemul -X -e pica -d winnt_test.img -d bc6:/dev/cd0c -j MIPS\\SETUPLDR</tt></b>
</pre>
</ol>
<p><font color="red"><tt>SETUPLDR</tt> manages to load some drivers from the cdrom,
but then it crashes randomly. First of all, it seems to be timing dependent.
Normal runs crash with some blue screen, and running with extreme slowdown
(such as when using the <tt>-i</tt> option for full instruction trace) results
in an error about not being able to initialize video.</font>
</p>
<p><br>
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