On Thursday 04 January 2007 13:38, Siju George wrote: > Hi, > > May I know if people have tried out OpenBSD on the following qemu > hardware emulators? > > qemu-system-arm > qemu-system-mipsel > qemu-system-sparc > qemu-system-mips > qemu-system-ppc > qemu-system-x86_64 > > I wanted to have an experience of OpenBSD on hardware other than x86 > and amd64. SIMH provided a way to experience VAX :-) > > Just would like to know if other platforms are supported as well > before I download the ftp install CD/floppy image. > > will the SGI port run under mips/mipsel? > > Thankyou so much :-) > > kind regards > > Siju
Hi Siju, Though I haven't played with qemu, it seems you are making a very common mistake in your thinking; a complete system is far more than just the processor it contains. For example, there are tons of different processors in the "mips" family and each one has slight differences. But that is not the real problem when it comes to software support. Each *system* which uses any of the "mips" processor also contains many other additional chips which supply various functionality like serial ports, hard drive interfaces, types of buses for expansion cards and countless other required pieces of equipment in the system. Having software/compiler support for the particular processor used in a system is only a step in the right direction but is insufficient for operation; you must also have software support (drivers) for the additional chips used in the complete system design. Emulators, like qemu, vmware and similar, normally try to emulate an entire system, not just the particular processor. I had to guess, I would assume the qemu-system-mips emulator is actually emulating one of the old "DECstation" systems (both the mips CPU *and* the supporting chipsets). If my guess is correct, you would want to use the OpenBSD PMAX port on it. The PMAX port is no longer maintained due to lack of interest but you can still download the old version. Kind Regards, JCR
