Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

About Qemu-system-ppc, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, macOS and Linux that can run Mac OS 9.0 up to Mac OS X 10.5

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ckweb
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Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

I came across a former Google Play emulator called Limbo, which apparently is a QEMU port to Android? I haven't used QEMU before, but I've heard it can run Linux OSes, Windows, some OSX versions as well as lesser known OSes, and of interest to me, newer versions of QEMU can also run Classic Mac OS 9.1-9.2.2?

I ask about this because I'm hoping to sideload LIMBO's QEMU port onto my Chromebook, which by the next Chrome OS upgrade version 80, if my ASUS Flip qualifies for it, will be possible without having to switch the OS to the 'easily-erasable' developer mode. I'm hoping any of this may be of interest here? I happily run Basilisk II already but I'd love to bump my Mac OS emulation to OS 9 and all of the great classic PPC software 68k Macs can't run!

With Basilisk II for Android, my Chromebook is already a 'Yaeger' (or a less-bulky 'Blackbird') now I'd love to turn it into a 'Comet' (or a less-bulky 'Kanga') as well with the help of QEMU /LIMBO :wink:
Last edited by ckweb on Wed Jan 08, 2020 6:48 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by trapexit »

QEMU is really a set of emulators. Limbo according to the website only supports x86 and ARM emulation. Not PPC system emulation which would be needed for MacOS.
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Re: Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by trapexit »

https://github.com/limboemu/limbo/wiki/Quickstart
https://github.com/limboemu/limbo/wiki/Downloads

I take that back. Appears PPC is supported. Looks like the QEMU version is new enough that it may work.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

Okay, great: thanks TrapExit! (so I'm not going crazy, lol) :smile: I wiped/put my Chromebook in dev mode then downloaded & installed this: Limbo PPC Emulator. I've never used QEMU before, so I have no clue how to gimmy this rig! :shock:

So far, I've tried both a boot/intall ISO of 9.2.2 as well as an actual 1.5gb .qcow2 image with 9.2.2 on it. One issue I'm having is that Limbo is not letting me add any disk or cd images, only create new ones, so I created a new .qcow2 image (that's the only types it creates, afaik). I renamed my boot images to the name of the new one I made in Limbo, but it doesn't want to boot.

To try to troubleshoot the issue, I installed the x86 version of Limbo and a x86 boot image, and it refused to add the image as well. Then I created a new .qcow2 image, replaced it with my boot image (a live boot cd) and the darn thing worked that time, and the live cd was an iso, not a .qcow2 image, go figure!

So I'm stumped as to why Limbo PPC is refusing to boot any of the OS 9 disk and cd images. Maybe it's in the settings, maybe it needs to have a PPC ROM added or maybe it's just not ready to run OS 9. From everything I've found OS X is working, but that OS is too heavy for my Chromebook compared to OS 9. :(
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by Cat_7 »

I installed on my phone. It seems it carries an openbios from March 2017, which is quite old. On my phone it will not allow loading a disk/cdrom image from the default downloads folder. Perhaps that is also affecting you?

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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

Exactly, Cat_7!

It gives me the same directory error message you get (and from my testing, all versions of Limbo produce this error). This is how I made it work for me, at least with with the x86 version of Limbo:

1. I created and named a new disk image within Limbo
2. Doing that registered the new disk in Limbo's main setting window
3. Then I used the name I gave the new image I made in Limbo to rename the image I want to boot from

That's how I got the 32-bit version of ReactOS to boot from Limbo. That is also what I tried to do with all my OS 9 boot CDs and a .qcow2 image 24bit made for me with 9.2.2 (thanks, 24bit!) :mrgreen:, but none of them booted up. Maybe it has to do with changing a setting, a missing ROM, or some advanced instructions I'm unaware of. I'm hoping it's not because OS 9 isn't compatible with it.

Continuing with ReactOS, I now downloaded the Install ISO. I created two new image disks in Limbo and replaced the first one with the ReactOS Install image. It loads and sees the second empty disk, but refuses to install, even though it can format the image fine. Before and after formatting the empty disk, the ReactOS installer only says it cannot create a new system partition.

Short of getting a disk image (like in the .qcow2 format) with ReactOS already installed, I will only be able to run the ReactOS Live CD inside of Limbo :(
Last edited by ckweb on Tue Jan 21, 2020 2:49 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by 24bit »

The .qcow2 image is booting with Cat_7´s Screamer build from April 2019.

Image

I seem to recall that most of the QemuPPC proceedings are from 2019?
Could it be that Limbo simply misses all those updates?
That "someone" was me, btw.
Not that I would feel proud of making a plain 9.2 image. ;)
https://www.magentacloud.de/lnk/zq4MpCru
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by Cat_7 »

I moved the image I downloaded on the phone to a location at which limbo does see the file.

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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

24bit wrote: Not that I would feel proud of making a plain 9.2 image. ;)
https://www.magentacloud.de/lnk/zq4MpCru
You should feel proud, 24bit!

I'll get Screamer up and running soon, I was simply hoping Limbo would have a little (any?) success with OS 9 (or earlier PPC OSes) like it's having with ReactOS. It's a shame they quit development a couple of years ago, they were so close to surpassing SheepShaver, on ARM devices no less! :shock: that would have been amazingly cool! :cool:
Last edited by ckweb on Tue Jan 21, 2020 2:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

Cat_7 wrote:I moved the image I downloaded on the phone to a location at which limbo does see the file.
Thanks for the tip, Cat_7!

Since OS 9 is not booting at this point, let me see if I can move the ReactOS images somewhere Limbo won't complain is an unsupported directory. Then I can continue slowly forging forward on my mission to at the very least try to boot OS 9. I mean, if it boots, that may give some folks with actual development skills a reason to update Limbo, at least for OS 9's sake (I know, it's real wishful thinking).. I'd hate to see Limbo, with so much promise, in actual limbo! :shock:

update: well, I moved my disk files into the play files area, I even tried creating a Limbo folder, and I couldn't drop anything inside the root folder (although Limbo does warn that both the 'downloads' and 'root' directories are not supported). I may have to setup QEMU elsewhere, try installing ReactOS on an image, then run a full version of it on Limbo.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

Cat_7 wrote:I installed on my phone. It seems it carries an openbios from March 2017, which is quite old. On my phone it will not allow loading a disk/cdrom image from the default downloads folder. Perhaps that is also affecting you?

Best,
Cat_7
Hi everyone! I did some more testing today. As noted before, other Limbo ARM builds can boot a ReactOS live iso. I had to add the live iso as an empty image created by Limbo, which I replaced with the iso, since that's the only way you can 'add' any volume, just like what happened to you, Cat.

Today I configured QEMU on my Mac Mini and copied a 1GB image with 9.2.2 universal I made on it to test with Limbo ARM PPC. I used these settings: PPC, BeigeG3, Vanilla CPU, SDL display, 1 Core, 128mb ram, and VNC as an extra option also checked and created a new volume empty volume, replacing it with the 1GB OS9 Universal iso I made.

The screen did not load anything, but it didn't actually freeze up either like before, so it felt like it made some progress. I wasn't quite satisfied; I wanted to inch just a little more to see what it might actually do, so I pressed the 'install ROMs' button, hoping it would ask for an external Mac ROM, but it just did a little thing and stopped. I tried one or two more times and the same thing happened, not much.

Still, I figured 'let me give it one more spin' before calling it quits again. And then I got to the OpenBIOS page! In all this time, I've only seen the bios when I booted the ReactOS live iso using another Limbo ARM apk. This is exciting to me, at least a little, because even though it failed, I've never made it this far, you know? Here's the output from my boot attempt:

Code: Select all

Welcome to OpenBIOS v1.1 built on Mar 15 2017 19:38
Trying HD :,\\:tbxi...
MacOS: unable to find a usable NVRAM partition -using offset 0x1400.
MacOS: Boot Failure! (0xF3C481F6)
MacOS: unable to find an interrupt controller node.
EXIT
o > ■
It gave the same bios date info you mentioned, Cat, and I can actually type in Limbo's OpenBIOS, so it almost feels like a Mac Mini G4 trying to boot an unsupported OS 9 volume! :eek: It brought back memories of when I used open firmware to install Leopard on my unsupported eMac :smile: Also worth mentioning: Limbo does have an advance mode that allows inserting additional command line instructions, so maybe there's more stuff to try there as well? I only wish I could add a real Mac ROM to Limbo :sad:
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by adespoton »

You shouldn't need to install a Mac ROM to LIMBO -- just use the BeigeG3 or G4 setting and boot off the MacOS9Lives OS 9 installer. ROMs are only needed for older OSes that only boot on old world ROMs.

If you've got to the OpenBIOS prompt, then you're most of the way there... try to use the same boot flags documented for OS 9 booting in these forums and see how it goes.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

adespoton wrote:just use the BeigeG3 or G4 setting and boot off the MacOS9Lives OS 9 installer. ROMs are only needed for older OSes that only boot on old world ROMs.

If you've got to the OpenBIOS prompt, then you're most of the way there... try to use the same boot flags documented for OS 9 booting in these forums and see how it goes.
You're 'spot on', Adespoton :mrgreen:

Thanks for the tip! I recently got some G4 Minis to boot OS 9 from, so it's somewhat the same plan/idea? I'll look for some of the OS 9 boot flag code in here and try to use my OS 9 installer to get a little further with Limbo :smile:

Would the QEMU boot disk I made benefit from the OS 9 boot flags as well? I ask because I've only been able to attach one boot volume to Limbo, so I'm thinking that's worth a shot, too.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by adespoton »

I'd recommend getting it working in QEMU first, and then see what, if any, modifications are needed to make it boot exactly the same way under LIMBO.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by Cat_7 »

Success! I got it to run. I downloaded my pre-installed image with 9.2. The download process added the additional extension .bin to the 9.2.img file. I then moved the download to the internal storage/documents. Somehow Qemu seems to not like the extension (It guesses file content based on extension). After I removed the additional .bin extension, Limbo booted the image to the desktop. The mouse can be controlled with the finger.

Limbo has the option to set the mac model to mac99 and cpu to G4. That worked. Other settings might too.

Suffice to say that running on my Nokia 7 Plus doesn't provide stellar performance.

Best,
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

Wait, what! Wow! That's fantastic Cat 7! :eek: :cool:
Spill, spill, spill!!!

I'm gonna try it tonight as soon as I get back :mrgreen:

HUGE favor, Cat. Any way you could upload your pre-installed image someplace for me to try with it? I'll work with the settings you tried. Meanwhile I'll try it with my pre-installed disk image.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by Cat_7 »

Sure, see PM.

As I imagine the openbios in Limbo will perhaps not yet support the sungem network device, I've installed the realtek8139 network driver on the image. And the MacBench program with a result from my host. Perhaps you can run it to see how Qemu performs on your android device.

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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

I keep getting the same errors! I will try other settings now, but I'm also going to try Limbo with a couple of Android phones to see if I can replicate my OpenBIOS screen or even boot into OS 9 like you were able to.

Limbo does offer log files showing details about what's happening behind the scenes. I'm going to start reviewing and maybe saving some of those for additional clues. I wish I had done that when I was able to see an OpenBIOS screen to compare the log differences!
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by adespoton »

Just so we've got it recorded somewhere: current LIMBO is version 4.1.0 which is based off of QEMU 2.9.1.

So any issues/struggles with LIMBO should be searched in these forums against QEMU 2.9.1.

QEMU, by comparison, is currently at 4.2.0, and most of the Mac OS-related support started at 2.8 and stabilized in 3.x.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

Great investigative work, Adespoton! Well now that is really good to know for anyone trying to do this and makes more sense why it's not wanting to boot on my devices.

The Limbo PPC ARM project may get folks interested in the future when someone tries to develop QEMU for Android ARM devices in the future, as well as its other builds. So it looks like they stopped developing Limbo just as it began to working with the Mac OS.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by Cat_7 »

The readme.developers says more up to date qemu (4.0 or perhaps higher) can be included.

Line 89 here:
https://github.com/limboemu/limbo/blob/ ... developers

But the instructions are a bit to daunting for me.

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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by adespoton »

I'd package something, but I'm currently lacking both an Android device and spare time... let me know in this thread if you want to try and need assistance though.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by ckweb »

I've never compiled anything before! I can at least get the word out and see if I can find someone with the tools and a little more know-how in packaging apps. I've coded websites and done some java scripting, but nothing like this. There's a reason I work with Macs :oops: :shock:

I'm excited that we're so close to having a real OS 9 emulator for Android though, just like Basilisk II!

You know, I can give try giving it a shot! Why not? Any advice and tips on how to go about it that you can offer Adespoton would be most gratefully accepted!
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by win.exe »

trapexit wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 4:07 pm Looks like the QEMU version is new enough that it may work.
Apparently, they just released version 5.0.0 10 hr ago which is based on QEMU 5.1.0.
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Re: Mac OS 9 and X Emulation in QEMU / LIMBO for Android?

Post by Andrew_R »

it works with limbo 5.1.0 on 32-bit cheap tablet, but slowly (be sure to wait few minutes, you may want to disable screen suspend and set your mobile device to max performance - so orogress will be visible).

For provided image be sure to set machine type to mac99 and display type to VNC (otherwise it failed to display landscape orientation for me)



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