Comments on: MIPS blast from the past..

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 13 May 2016 08:13:04 +0000

In reply to neozeed.

Of course it’s possible to do something; DOS (and Windows 95?) on x86 has the same problem.

You “just” need to run a program that qemu knows is idle; on x86 this is a loop with the “hlt” instruction. On mips it would be a similar instruction or an emulator trap of some sort … hmmm.

Well, it looks like Linux uses it when you run a mips32 image on “qemu-system-mips64 -M malta -cpu 5Kc”. So you need to do whatever Linux is doing there.

NB: In my Linux test udev does something stupid (as usual) running “mtd_probe” hundreds of times. It boots eventually and you can “sudo chmod -x /lib/udev/mtd_probe” to STFU it.

By: neozeed

neozeed — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 12:16:28 +0000

In reply to Wong. the MIPS has no idle function. So, unfortunately it will run at 100% . Your only option is using another program to limit its cpu time... on linux, its cpulimit. I dont know of any windows one.

By: Wong

Wong — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 10:07:38 +0000

So I installed everything from scratch and even used someone else’s pre-built installation of NT4 on MIPS, but it consistently uses 100% CPU usage that I can’t do anything on it! Do you know how to solve this issue?

Thanks beforehand.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 13:37:34 +0000

There is a version of Internet explorer for NT mips, you can download it here…

ftp://papa.indstate.edu/mirror/msie/

By: Neozeed

Neozeed — Fri, 21 May 2010 19:20:49 +0000

Thats good to know... Yes there never was a service pack 2 for NT 4.0/MIPS. At this point it was clear that Intel was able to compete in the CPU market place, and the CISC wall that everyone had predicted was utter nonsense as the Pentium CPU blew this all away... (Yes, even though the Pentium & above are more hybrid CISC/RISC).

I've found that the only version of Qemu that can install NT 4.0 all the way is the Original version from Hervé.

Thanks for the heads up on 0.12.4!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:53:28 +0000

Do not install the NT 3.51 Service Pack 5; it will hang at the blue boot screen reporting memory and OS version.

For me, the Windows NT 4.0 setup hangs at the "initializing setup" screen. The text-based parts works flawlessly.
Booting a prepared image works, as does the SP1. (There's no NT4-SP2 for MIPS, right?)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:48:51 +0000

I was able to install Windows NT 3.51 Server (MIPS, Build 1057) on Qemu (0.12.4). You need to create a 5 MB FAT System partition using the NT4 ARCINST.EXE, then directly(!) run the NT 3.51 SETUPLDR.

If it hangs, retry (race condition?). But for me it worked. [Debian/squeeze x86_64 Intel Core 2 host]