David Given writes:
>
> You've no doubt heard me go on about the software-only PC emulator I've
> got on my web site (probably at tedious length). Well, I've finally got
> round to trying ELKS on it.
I give this a quick try a while ago, but didn't get very far.
>
> In summary? It runs fine. I used the comb image, and it boots and mounts
> the file system fine. Oddly, it takes about 20 seconds to get past the
> calibrating-delay-loop bit (and gets about 16 bogomips). date came up with
> 1 January 1997. clock came up with 31 December 1999. ash ran, but wouldn't
> run any child processes.
How much memory does the emulator pretend to have? ash takes up lots of
mem, and together with the rest of the binaries running (see previous
message), there is not much left for child processes.
The root of the problem is the ammount of dead heap space each process has
allocated in its data segment. For the next release I hope to try and trim
the chmem values on most of the binaries so the system has a bit more free
memory.
>
> I didn't get a chance to try the virtual consoles, because my window
> manager trapped the ALT key (there's always some excuse, isn't there?).
I am sure you can run without a window manager for a short while :-)
>
> I tried passwd and it went beserk, it seemed to be trying to dump the
> password file onto the sash command line over and over again. Eventually I
> reset it.
>
Is it possible the emulator is not interpreting the 8086 code correctly?
Another possibility is that we are using some dodgey code that the 8086
forgives, but a more strict emulator rejects.
Al
