OS X 10.2 on Qemu PowerPC

Blast from 2002

Blast from 2002

So yeah, I got 10.2 to install.  Well from my standpoint as a user it worked ok, but it is SLOW.. Then again my MacPro is a tad old, it is a 2006 model with 2 x 2 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors…. I hope to upgrade to the new MacPro when it finally launches later this year.

So yeah, On my computer this runs slower than my first 333Mhz iMac that I ran OS X on.  Needless to say a 450Mhz G4 blows this thing away, although I don’t think that is a fair comparison.

Even with all the screwed up colours, it is kind of neat going back into time to see where OS X, was with AIM & Internet Explorer.  How things changed with Apple carving out their own niche territory in both regards.

All in all it was an interesting time back then, with Apple making the leap from the dated OS 9, to the NeXT inspired OS X.  And as they say the rest is history.

OS X PowerPC on Qemu

In the latest release notes, I saw that Qemu can now run OS X!

Screen Shot 2013-08-14 at 9.35.57 PM

Language selection

Screen Shot 2013-08-15 at 12.12.08 PM

dmesg

 

The installer for 10.4 will run, but it’ll then freak out saying that this model of mac is not supported.  The ‘working’ cli I’m using is:

ppc-softmmu/qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios/ -m 256 -M g3beige -hda osx1046.vmdk  -cpu G3 -cdrom Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ DVD.toast -boot d

Sure the colours are off, and it is kind of pokey, but still the more guest OS’s on Qemu, namely for something like the PowerPC.  If anyone has any better idea of how to fully run OS X on Qemu drop me a note!  Plus there is additional information on the mailing list.

QEMU version 1.6.0-rc3 is out!

You can download the source code for it at Qemu.org.

Well this version runs surprisingly well on OS X.

Darwin 124244241046.ctinets.com 12.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 12.4.0: Wed May 1 17:57:12 PDT 2013; root:xnu-2050.24.15~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64), along with clang 421 (Apple clang version 4.0 (tags/Apple/clang-421.0.57) (based on LLVM 3.1svn)

I’m using glib-2.23.6, along with my older notes, which are somewhat PowerPC specific, but work fine on OS X.  First remember to setup your environment for glib2

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH

I ran into some issue with picking up libiconv with gconvert.c .  I just commented out the error message.

#if defined(USE_LIBICONV_GNU) && !defined (_LIBICONV_H)
#error GNU libiconv in use but included iconv.h not from libiconv
#endif
#if !defined(USE_LIBICONV_GNU) && defined (_LIBICONV_H)
//#error GNU libiconv not in use but included iconv.h is from libiconv
#endif

I also built it without GTK+ as building that looks simply overwhelming on OS X.  I had to build the included pixman with –disable-gtk flags.  In the configure script make it look like this:

#PKG_PROG_PKG_CONFIG
#if test $enable_gtk = auto ; then
# PKG_CHECK_EXISTS(gtk+-2.0, enable_gtk=yes, enable_gtk=no)
#fi
#if test $enable_gtk = yes ; then
# PKG_CHECK_MODULES(GTK, gtk+-2.0)
#fi

# if test “x$enable_gtk” = xyes; then
# HAVE_GTK_TRUE=
# HAVE_GTK_FALSE=’#’
#else
HAVE_GTK_TRUE=’#’
HAVE_GTK_FALSE=
#fi

Finally while the AdLib card is enabled by default now (yay) I kept on receiving the following error:

Assertion failed: (pio->offset >= off_last), function portio_list_add, file /usr/src/qemu-1.6.0-rc3/ioport.c, line 240.

So I just commented out the assert in ioport.c and I’ve been running Doom 1.1 for a few minutes without issue.  I’ve also been able to install Windows NT 4.0 on Qemu

Doom 1.1 & Windows NT 4.0 on Qemu 1.6 rc3

Doom 1.1 & Windows NT 4.0 on Qemu 1.6 rc3

And of course, this post on betaarchive.com by TC1988 goes a long way to help on building Qemu.

So yeah, welcome to Germany

My VPS is back online, in a different country.  I didn’t realize it a the time, but my provider is German, and well they are super pissed off about the US spying thing, and they pulled everything back.

I’m still in Hong Kong, and I just hope it is faster for me…

Although from the stats, the vast majority of my readership is American, which I guess isn’t too surprising.

 

At least the internet isn’t censored… yet… Not that I’m all that controversial.

More Snowden fallout

So my VPS provider got all spooked about the spooks spooking the US internet and pulled the plug.  This left me in a kind of haphazard state but there isn’t much I can do.

And considering that everyone seems to want out of the US hosting space I’ve moved my blog to Egypt for the time being.

So yeah.

I have backups of everything else, but I’m not all that sure I want to load it up on Egypt…..

But at least virtuallyfun is back in action.

Sad day for people who signed onto SUN’s virtualization strategies.

From slashdot, Oracle to stop developing SUN virtualization technologies.  In a way I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner, as chasing after VMWare isn’t part of Larry’s strategy to take over the world with databases.

How long does the SPARC have left to live?

Or Solaris for that matter?

—edit seems they are going to keep VirtualBOX afterall!

https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/important_information_about_oracle_desktop

 

Going forward, Oracle’s desktop portfolio investments will be focused on continued development and new enhancements to both Oracle Secure Global Desktop and Oracle VM VirtualBox software.

Wolfenstein 3D for DOS/4GW!

After reading about the Blake Stone compile fixes, as it was a Wolf3d port, I came across a post on the forum Wolf3d Haven about trying to find the source code to something called wolf4gw.  Now wolf4gw is a port of the Borland C source of Wolfenstein 3d to Open Watcom C++‘s 32bit MS-DOS extender DOS/4GW, done by ‘ripper’.

The project eventually gave way to wolf4sdl, and as they say the rest is history.

Sadly, it seems that just about all the source copies of wolf4gw were lost, except I did manage to find an ‘improved’ version simply referred to as wolf3dx.  From the blurb:

Tricob has released the Wolf4GW-based source code of WolfDX. Included is a text file called (Tricob).TXT.

I have been using Watcom 10.0 for Duke Nukem 3d, however, this version relies on the _asm inline assembler which was introduced in Watcom 11.  However, Watcom 11c had issues with some of the assembly forcing me to go even further to OpenWatcom 1.3.  For me the install was easy, I used CrossOver to install OpenWatcom for DOS-DOS32bit only, copied the compiler into DOSBox, and played mostly with the makefiles, and finally got a working exe!

Screen Shot 2013-07-12 at 11.57.24 AM Screen Shot 2013-07-12 at 11.58.00 AM

I know it may not look like much, but really it is running in 32bit protected mode!

Since all of this is open/freeware/shareware I can redistribute OpenWatcom, the source to wolf3dx, and the shareware levels of Wolfenstein.  Naturally I’m using DOSBox to compile and test, but you can use anything that can run MS-DOS 32bit stuff.

Download my archive here.