Just a QEMU-PPC question

[vlad557776]

Hello.

Recently I was thinking - "Can QEMU run Windows NT Workstation 4.0 PPC?"

So, I'm asking this question here.

If yes, please send me some configs.

Any answers will be appreciated.

[adespoton]

NT for PowerMac was never completed, so a different BIOS is needed to get anywhere.

https://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2016/ ... 8-in-qemu/ is about as far as I've seen anyone get; ProgrammingKid asked a couple of years back on the qemu-devel list, and there's been no response yet.

So... you can see if the skiboot bios has been updated to fully support NT, but at this point you're heading into unknown territory.

[vlad557776]

Okay. So the standard OpenBIOS will not work with NT

[adespoton]

You can try it, but I see no reason it would. Probably worth checking though, as people are adding new stuff to OpenBIOS all the time.

[WindowsNeptune]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/wi ... g3.870359/

According to the link I pasted, it says Windows NT 4.0 PPC is designed for "PReP Boxes" but not Macs. However I know nothing about what exactly PReP is

I remember a magazine I've seen before, on that magazine a article said Motorola reelased PowerPC machine model "PowerStack II", in which pre-installed NT PPC. I wonder if one day we can find some real PC's BIOS and let Qemu use them to emulate PPC..

[Cat_7]

qemu-system-ppc can emulate a IBM RS6000 machine on which NT 4.0 PPC prior to SP2 could run with -M 40p.
I believe NT should be booted/installed with the aid of the ARC bootloader. And I don't know whether it needs SCSI support.

A further stumbling block might be that openbios needs to read a file system it does not support.

Best,
Cat_7

[vlad557776]

Interesting information, Cat_7. Maybe try to install it after my current task to install all Whistlers.

[WindowsNeptune]

qemu-system-ppc can emulate a IBM RS6000 machine on which NT 4.0 PPC prior to SP2 could run with -M 40p.
I believe NT should be booted/installed with the aid of the ARC bootloader. And I don't know whether it needs SCSI support.

A further stumbling block might be that openbios needs to read a file system it does not support.

Best,
Cat_7

So thank you for providing the info about Qemu-PPC and NT. I have a small question, do I need additional BIOS to run with -M 40p, Or the BIOS has already contained in Qemu offical Windows distribution?

If I don't need sth more, maybe run like this, for example?

qemu-system-ppc -M 40p -L . -m 128 -cdrom NTPPC.iso -boot d

Thank you so much!

P.S. Friend, have you ever succeed in booting from NT4 PPC CD using Qemu?

[Cat_7]

If you run qemu-system-ppc with -M 40p you'll see it defaults to using openbios. That bios is included. If you want or need to run some other bios, you'll need to add that with the -bios parameter.

P.S. Friend, have you ever succeed in booting from NT4 PPC CD using Qemu?

Now that is an interesting question: I believe no-one has ever successfully ran Windows NT 4 PPC with Qemu. That is why I mentioned the problems you are likely to meet when trying.

Best,
Cat_7

[vlad557776]

P.S. Friend, have you ever succeed in booting from NT4 PPC CD using Qemu?

I'm still installing Windows 2000 betas and XP betas.