patch works with SFS v1.290 which means that the SFS version on the AOS4.1FE iso can be used to create and format SFS partitions for new installations.
Yes I have two patches sent recently. I've updated the patch for SFS, new version is here: https://patchew.org/QEMU/2024041119244 ... 644E6026@zero.eik.bme.hu/ which is closer to previous behaviour but other than avoiding some warnings with -d unimp it probably works the same.
The other PIRQ/PINT patch fixes an issue with keeping track of PCI interrupt states. While it did not fix Hans's problem it does fix a bug so that patch is still valid.
balaton wrote:Yes I have two patches sent recently. I've updated the patch for SFS, new version is here: https://patchew.org/QEMU/2024041119244 ... 644E6026@zero.eik.bme.hu/ which is closer to previous behaviour but other than avoiding some warnings with -d unimp it probably works the same.
The other PIRQ/PINT patch fixes an issue with keeping track of PCI interrupt states. While it did not fix Hans's problem it does fix a bug so that patch is still valid.
Ok the 2 patches now work with SFS. Thank you very much.
Update 1/2 and later updates can now be installed completely including the new efl.library which caused problems before.
With SFS the Sam460 machine is very fast, but still a bit slower than Pegasos2/AmigaOneXe, but it's really fun now.
After update 2 there are still some small mouse jerks, but it has improved considerably. Hats off.....
MacStudio ARM M1 Max Qemu//Pegasos2 AmigaOs4.1 FE / AmigaOne A1222plus AmigaOs4.1 FE
I'm new to the forum. I'm a senior software and hardware developer with extensive experience in reverse engineering projects. Currently, I'm recovering from a broken back and have plenty of spare time, so I'm looking for an engaging challenge to keep my mind busy. I'm interested in getting involved with QEMU AmigaOS emulation and possibly doing some device driver work (I've read something about porting a Voodoo driver from other opensource projects..).
I've read a lot of information, but it's quite overwhelming. Can anyone advise me on the best version of AmigaOS 4.1 FE to get started with? I'm considering buying the the Pegasos 2 version.
Briefly about Qemu, I have been working with this emulation and AmigaOs4.1 for almost 2 years. For me, the Pegasos2 machine is currently the best choice and I have also tested it extensively.
The AmigaOneXe machine also works very well, but has a few limitations associated with real hardware (Articia-S) as we cannot store firmware variables, UDMA/DMA for the IDE drives must be entered manually to enable it.
Sam460ex is by far the most modern hardware that can be emulated, but at the moment it is not quite as fast as the other two machines, but it also works very well.
The developer Balaton Zoltan has provided this NG hardware emulation for us and is still developing it further.
Since Qemu is only line-based, I have provided a specially written installation guide for it. It describes the installation with AmigaOs4.1 Pegasos2/AmigaOneXe via BBoot. BBoot is an alternative bootloader that can be used.
On the project page there are also some interesting approaches on how to provide a graphics card driver. But without them also developing directly under AmigaOs4.1 it will probably be difficult to provide any drivers that also provide 3D acceleration for this machine. So the only thing left for us would be Voodoo3dfx support, since there are already drivers under AmigaOs4.1.
I myself also actively run a YouTube channel where I show and use the Qemu/Pegasos2 machine with AmigaOs4.1.
For me, Qemu with AmigaOs4.1 is currently only of secondary importance, as I recently ordered real hardware (A1222+) and will use it primarily, but of course it would be nice to be able to push the Qemu emulation with AmigaOs4.1 a little further, as it already works very well and quickly.
I hope this is some useful information for you.If you would like to know anything else, please feel free to ask.
MacStudio ARM M1 Max Qemu//Pegasos2 AmigaOs4.1 FE / AmigaOne A1222plus AmigaOs4.1 FE
@defcon9 Hello and welcome. You can chose between amigaone, pegasos2 and sam460ex. Each has some advantages and disadvantages so nothing is perfect. Sam460ex is easiest to install but currently has some issues and is slower than the other two so if you don't already have this version then better chose from amigaone or pegasos2. These will need some tweaking as they don't include sm502 driver but with BBoot this should not be too difficult. The pegasos2 version of AmigaOS has some kernel bugs (which may have already been fixed but no update was released), some of these could be worked around and others may happen (like SDL1 graphics issues with some statically linked programs) but is well tested and should run well. Amigaone uses the same emulation as the two machines have the same or very similar components so it should also run well but the AmigaOS version is a bit different. It does not have issue with SDL1 but may need some tweaks but it's not more difficult to get work than pegasos2. If you're getting it new maybe you can only still buy amigaone version anyway as the pegasos2 is sold out. I recommend this guide: https://qmiga.codeberg.page/aos_bboot.html
If you're interested in contributing to QEMU emulation a start page is on the Developer section of my home page (for short qmiga.codeberg.page that redirects there) the development page is in the top menu: https://codeberg.org/qmiga/pages/wiki
If you're interested in graphics I've written an article about the possibilities here: https://codeberg.org/qmiga/pages/wiki/AmigaOSGfx AmigaOS already has Voodoo driver but QEMU has no Voodoo emulation. There are several projects (mame, PCem, WinUAE) that have Voodoo emulation which could be adapted for QEMU but one issue is that it may need a non-free ROM which would likely make it not accepted in QEMU and also it's a limited hardware so the emulated one would have the same limitations therefore it's not the best option.
It you're more interested in developing drivers for AmigaOS instead of improving device emulation in QEMU then there are other options such as virtio disk, network or sound driver or a driver for the PCI Cirrus VGA or stdvga in QEMU which may be smaller projects and mostly AmigaOS specific that could help running AmigaOS on QEMU without having to learn about QEMU itself.
Thank you both for the detailed information; it's much appreciated. This has definitely set me on the right path.
I managed to order the Pegasos II version, which is in stock at amiga-shop.net and should arrive within three days (fingers crossed). It's funny to encounter the concept of "software being out of stock", even in 2024.
I always advocate buying original software to support the developers, but never afraid of patching & experimenting with "acquired" software in a fair and non-harmful way to push things forward.
While waiting for my Pegasos II license, I dug up the SAM460ex ISO to gain some perspective. I got the system installed with network support.
I've read most of the documentation you recommended, including the P96 API and parts of the QEMU code. I need to get more comfortable with the environment before I can assess how I can contribute. Coming from a BSD C++ development and embedded background, it shouldn't be too hard to transition back to Amiga concepts (I grew up with an A1000, A500, and A1200) and always watched AmigaOS and MorphOS development from the sideline over the years. Maybe getting the SM502 driver to support modern screen resolutions would be a good starting project. After that, I’d love to look into OS support for a paravirtualization driver.
Quick question about the 460ex ecosystem: I'm trying to install the "Extras" from the install CD. However, when I mount the virtual CD drive again in QEMU (in addition to my HD file), it forcefully boots into the Install CD everytime, even though I've manually override U-Boot to boot from the SATA HDD. I see U-Boot indicating to boot from HD0, but I end up in the CD installer everytime. Is there some Amiga magic I'm missing?
Maybe getting the SM502 driver to support modern screen resolutions would be a good starting project.
I think you can't do that. It's not something missing from sm501 emulation, it works fine with Linux and MorphOS with in screen modes (apart from MorphOS currently not booting on sam460ex emulation in latest QEMU for different reasons but used to work with older QEMU versions) but AmigaOS has some limitation in its graphics.library that does not support the format that the sm501/sm502 use for 24/32 bit modes so the AmigaOS driver only works up to 16 bit. Also the siliconmotion502.chip driver is closed source as is AmigaOS so you can't do much about that.
Quote:
After that, I’d love to look into OS support for a paravirtualization driver.
I think potential projects you could consider are these with increasing difficulty: - Easy: virtio sound or network driver, these are all documented both on the virtio and AmigaOS side AHI and network driver APIs should have docs and example code. - Medium: virtio disk (blk or scsi) driver or cirrus-vga/stdvga bochs DISPI interface driver, there may be some reverse engineering needed and less example code available for these but if you want a challenge these could be good candidates - Hard: 3D support either with virtio-gpu or ati-vga (there's some closed source work going on for virtio-gpu driver but as it's unclear if this will be available and likely won't be free so I still consider these to be potential projects in the future but maybe not something you want to start at first).
Quote:
Quick question about the 460ex ecosystem: I'm trying to install the "Extras" from the install CD. However, when I mount the virtual CD drive again in QEMU (in addition to my HD file), it forcefully boots into the Install CD everytime, even though I've manually override U-Boot to boot from the SATA HDD. I see U-Boot indicating to boot from HD0, but I end up in the CD installer everytime. Is there some Amiga magic I'm missing?
Maybe boot priorities of partitions? Either you need to set the HD higher as the CD or you could boot without the CD and insert the disk after booted. With gtk and cocoa display backends there might be a menu entry for it, with -display sdl you can use the change command in QEMU monitor to attach a CD, see also info block QEMU monitor command. You may need to add -device ide-cd,id=something without a -drive or -cdrom option to attach an empty CD drive. Or you can access the early startup menu by holding or quickly keep pushing both mouse buttons while AmigaOS boots around where the logo appears where you can select the boot device.
Quick question about the 460ex ecosystem: I'm trying to install the "Extras" from the install CD. However, when I mount the virtual CD drive again in QEMU (in addition to my HD file), it forcefully boots into the Install CD everytime, even though I've manually override U-Boot to boot from the SATA HDD. I see U-Boot indicating to boot from HD0, but I end up in the CD installer everytime. Is there some Amiga magic I'm missing?
For me the easiest way was always to use Amiga Early Startup (boot menu) when installing the extras from the AmigaOs4.1 iso as Balaton already described in the last section.
On which machine do you use Qemu and with which operating system?
I can help you with the setup of AmigaOs4.1, the standard installation of AmigaOs4.1 is ok, but again many components are already outdated and you would need to update them with newer versions. If you don't already know, www.os4depot.net is one of the best places to find a very large archive of tools/browsers/applications/games and lots of developer stuff
Unfortunately I can't help you too much with the further development of Qemu/AmigaOs4.1, because I only use the stuff that Balaton Zoltan has made available to us very extensively. AmigaOs4.1 is currently giving me a lot of pleasure and I would appreciate it if you could provide some new improvements.
As already mentioned, I will also use real hardware in the near future, as Qemu is currently too limited in functionality for me. 16bit screen mode, missing 3d acceleration, network somewhat limited. And of course because like most people here in the forum I want to own something real that runs AmigaOs4.1 natively
MacStudio ARM M1 Max Qemu//Pegasos2 AmigaOs4.1 FE / AmigaOne A1222plus AmigaOs4.1 FE
Great advise, I'll start by looking into the Virtio sound driver. This also allows me to get my dev environment up & running properly before diving in deeper.
The boot issue is resolved by mounting the CD-ROM afterwards, as suggested. Thanks!
@Maijestro
I'm on macOS Sonoma (ARM64). I could set up a TeamViewer session for you, but then it might be better to wait for my Pegasos 2 disk and license to arrive, which should be in a few days.
It would be great to have the basics up and running so I can dive into the code immediately.
I'm also a hardware guy, but I have way too many hardware & desktop systems already. The "woman approval factor" for another machine is very low ;) I really depend on macOS for my daily cross-platform development work, so having a mobile system that can virtualize multiple other OSes is more practical for me.
I'm on macOS Sonoma (ARM64). I could set up a TeamViewer session for you, but then it might be better to wait for my Pegasos 2 disk and license to arrive, which should be in a few days.
It would be great to have the basics up and running so I can dive into the code immediately.
I'm also a hardware guy, but I have way too many hardware & desktop systems already. The "woman approval factor" for another machine is very low ;) I really depend on macOS for my daily cross-platform development work, so having a mobile system that can virtualize multiple other OSes is more practical for me.
On their hardware Qemu/Pegasos2 runs fast with AmigaOs4.1 and is in my opinion one of the best at the moment.
A TeamViewer session should not be necessary and you will not learn how to use Qemu or AmigaOs4.1. There are already some guides that you just have to follow and if you don't understand something just write here in the forum I or someone else will be able to guide you through the installation.
My English installation guide lags a bit behind the German guide and is not as detailed, but for the first installation it should be enough, as well as Balton's own installation guide which can be used for this. You can do it...
MacStudio ARM M1 Max Qemu//Pegasos2 AmigaOs4.1 FE / AmigaOne A1222plus AmigaOs4.1 FE
For example, Heretic 2 is offered at an irresistible price. (EUR 44.95) Not to mention Quake 2.
Welcome to the fantastic Amiga world.
Taking this yardstick into account Elden Ring plus the upcoming expansion Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree should be sold for 1,000 EUR.
Oh I forgot, The Sam upgrade for 15 euros is a real bargain
Well this is a trend that has been going on for many years. I remember when I bought Quake 1 by "ClickBoom"
I sent the game back at the time PayPal didn't exist yet. Simply because it said minimum requirements 030 needless to say the game ran at 4fps on my 1200 with 030.
After showing my X5000 at an Amiga gathering at the weekend, I've got the itch to revisit the GPU passthrough topic again. I don't know why, it's totally unrelated. I think after lugging my huge and very heavy X5K tower several hundred miles, the prospect of a small ITX build running QEMU is very appealing
I'll read back through where we are with things, but an initial question - can I just install latest mainline QEMU and profit now? or are there still patches that I need to manually add and build QEMU myself? Not that doing so was a problem. From memory it was all really smooth to do.
MartinW wrote:After showing my X5000 at an Amiga gathering at the weekend, I've got the itch to revisit the GPU passthrough topic again. I don't know why, it's totally unrelated. I think after lugging my huge and very heavy X5K tower several hundred miles, the prospect of a small ITX build running QEMU is very appealing
I understand what you mean, that's why I opted for the A1222plus, a very small ITX tower that is easy to transport.
Quote:
I'll read back through where we are with things, but an initial question - can I just install latest mainline QEMU and profit now? or are there still patches that I need to manually add and build QEMU myself? Not that doing so was a problem. From memory it was all really smooth to do.
Actually you only need Qemu 9 and the latest BBoot version from Balaton Zoltan and of course the appropriate hardware.
MacStudio ARM M1 Max Qemu//Pegasos2 AmigaOs4.1 FE / AmigaOne A1222plus AmigaOs4.1 FE
Had a bit of a go at getting the GPU passthrough running this evening with no luck. I used QEMU 9.0.0 from Arch repos and bboot v7. GPU was R9 270 which is the one that Geennamm got working I believe.
Now, having had a read through the bboot section I believe that I no longer have to manually go into the firmware and adjust the PCI bar sizes. Is this correct?
I need to be sure of that because i can boot to the point where the log message says Starting exec and then my entire system hangs. Sort of slowly! Over the course of a second or two the mouse slows down and stops responding, keyboard too. There is no output from the passthrough GPU.
My initial though was IOMMU groupings and something not being right there but I checked and my GPU is the only thing in the group that I'm passing through (well, and the PCI bridge but I think that's always been the case).
I'm not reading too much into this yet because it's been months and I can't really remember what state I left this machine and it's install in, so there might be something else wrong, but previously I got it working much better than this.
I'm thinking maybe I should build QEMU from source again so that I know that no odd options have been specified. In fact, I think that's a good first move. It doesn't take long. But it will be another night.
@MartinW I've created a new topic for GPU pass through to get these in one place so see there. BBoot on pegasos2 will truncate 64bit BARs to 32 bit and will tell you in the messages it prints if it did that so check that to see what it did. Then you don't need the Forth script any more to do it. Depending on the card you may either need pegasos2.rom and run bboot from that to fix BARs and IRQ settings or if the card has AtomBIOS which the firmware cannot run but the AmigaOS driver can use then it might work with just -kernel bboot but it's not clear which cards need which way so maybe try both with pegasos2.rom and bboot and just bboot if pegasos2.rom crashes on the card ROM.
I have a question that comes to me spontaneously. And I can't logically conceive the answer
Why don't we donate an ATI graphics card that is compatible with qemu requests to @Balaton
So you can work on it and do all the tests you prefer working on a single card.
Or there are problems on the part of those who work in the AmigaOS field and develop drivers etc.
Because we honestly don't understand anything anymore and as interesting as this project may be, it never seems to take off.
Because if there are problems with those who create the AmigaOS drivers there is no point in wasting time, this is the impression that I personally am having.
Because time ago with qemu (Morphos) I bought 2 USB sticks for audio. here you can see what I did to make qemu recognize them:
In the qemu 9 Windows 10 etc. version, the emulated restart or shutdown of the machine no longer takes place from the menu. (OS 4.1) Probably whoever compiled the package for the Windows version forgot to include it. In previous versions it worked.
@white There's nothing to include for it in QEMU so the problem must be somewhere else. Are you sure you're trying the same AmigaOS version that used to work? I think shutdown on pegasos2 was added in 4.1FE Update 2 so if you're booting from a CD for example the shutdown menu item won't be there until you install Update 2. Also amigaone does not support it at all and don't know what's the status with sam460ex. So you're probably doing something different than what worked before or you're not using QEMU 9.0 but a very old version.
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