I already started this as OT on another thread but thought it would be better to have its own.

Would there be a decent way to run MorphOS on virtualized hw ?

I know virtualization on PPC is no way reaching all the nice features supported on x86 Virtualization software but it would be a good way to abstract the hardware to avoid developping drivers every couple of years for another piece of hardware that will not be for sale anymore at release time.

Are there any other alternatives such as:

- running hosted (Mac On Linux or as AROS does)

- emulated on x86 (PearPC, QEmu) ?

Which one of these provide something close to what MorphOS can support in terms of hw ?


Piru / Bigfoot / Henes / Itix / other MorphOS devs are more than welcome into the discussion :) (not too much or I will be blamed for postponing MorphOS 3.0).

To recap all the info I collected so far on this:
The most straight forward technical way to get MorphOS running in the VM would be to adapt QEMU with a gfx card virtual driver for a supported MorphOS gfx card (SIS would be easier than radeon).

Of course this would only be a first step to boot the OS. As reported on the other thread the licensing check would be problematic on its current form and additional work would certainly need to be done on the virtual drivers. The speed would certainly be limited (maybe less if running on a PPC host ?).

The interesting point is that according to my understanding most of this (except the license part) could be done without changing MorphOS.

Check this.

Unfortunately 3DLayers by default means running under QEMU is going to be difficult, but disabling it means you could just get basic 2D working through a graphics driver for the emulated graphics adapter - the Cirrus logic CL5446 card QEMU emulates is exactly the same as the ones on the original Picasso IV. So there is a workable driver around somewhere that can be forward-ported.

The ES1371 that it emulates is the same one that AHI supports, and the Network card.. the RTL8139C is pretty common in Pegasos boxes as far as I remember :D

Okay so it's a step back in accelerated graphics, but it is a good start in all other aspects :)

i don not really understand this thread. is there a way to emulate ppc in order to run morphos on a non-ppc or yet not compatible ppc arch? if yes, low speed does not matter for my purposes!

With some dev work MorphOS can run in QEMU (it was done by one of the MorphOS developer as a proof of concept). This is either by doing MorphOS drivers for QEMU emulated hardware or by doing QEMU virtual devices for existing MorphOS drivers.

One of the most important limitation is the MorphOS license which assume running on an unique hardware.

Cdfr: i think i prefer MosTeam to get focused on porting MOS on more Apple hardware as a native system.

> This is either by doing MorphOS drivers for QEMU emulated hardware
> or by doing QEMU virtual devices for existing MorphOS drivers.

IIRC Bigfoot took the second approach.

Quote:

I think that apart from the problem of the license anyone outside of the MorphOS team could make changes on QEMU to run MorphOS. This would allow to run MorphOS on a very large hardware base.

Cdfr: But that would be only emulation. I ran MacOSX (ppc) on qemu and i have to say it was quite slow..

BIOS missing? where to get?

Code:

http://www.qemu.org/qemu-doc.html

i know that page but isnt there a ready compiled bios module or such?


ok, this question is useless until qemu can emualte mos-hardware ootb. sorryy...

[ Edited by SSSilvaaa on 2009/10/4 19:21 ]