Project - hardware to run AOS4 for 35 euro on QEMU 10 + GPU  passthrough

@smarkusg

That's pretty impressive. You're now using a hybrid NGQmiga

Does the real sound card affect the emulation speed?

@Maijestro
How do I disable emulation so that the graphics card, sound card, network card, and hard drive work on real hardware? That's certain.
What remains is ‘motherboard emulation’ + ports + drives, etc. I no longer have any free slots in my x86 to test the drive.

@smarkusg
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Maybe you need to be more specific before others think it's really that simple. It works for you but you should mention that if I understood correctly it needs an Intel HDA driver for AmigaOS which is not any more available unless you still have it from before when it was public. Without that it's the same as the HDMI audio that the hardware can be passed through but no driver in AmigaOS for it.

@smarkusg
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I think if no driver is loaded for the via-ac97 (i.e. it's not selected in audio prefs) it should not affect performance as it's not enabled by anything. To make sure, you can move SYS:Devs/AHI/via-ac97.audio and/or SYS:Devs/AudioModes/VIA-AC97 to Storage to disable them. To make really sure you can comment out /* Function 5: AC97 Audio */ in qemu/hw/isa/vt82c686.c::via_isa_realize() and the object_initialize_child(..."ac97"...) in via_isa_init() to completely remove the emulation.

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You forgot the most important affecting performance: CPU emulation. Unless you have a PPC host that can use KVM you can't remove that. For disks you could try passing through a SATA controller but I think virtio-blk or scsi drivers might help this as well. Unfortunately despite Hans who wrote it asked AmigaKit to publish his virtio.library to make it easier for others to write virtio drivers for network/disk/sound/etc. we just got no answer about this from them. If someone at AmigaKit is reading this they could reply my emails...

@balaton
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This works best - permanently disabling AC97 from emulation. Thanks.
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Forget about it. Their sense of self-worth does not allow them to respond appropriately.
From another thread on this forum, I don't understand people who thank "Makedir" for the update. The guy replaced basic system files with errors and people still thank him for it.
Wouldn't it be easier to restore the files from the official AOS4FE system?

@smarkusg
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Have you tested if this makes any difference or do you just mean this is the best way to surely disable it? I think even without removing it if no driver is loaded for it it should not affect speed. I've only seen a difference due to via-ac97 with MorphOS which always runs sound even if nothing is played (maybe to prevent clicks) but AmigaOS seems to only enable it if you play some sound so even with the driver loaded it should not matter if you select a different sound card. If you test this don't forget to report the results back here.
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I don't know the reason why they did not reply as I haven't got any answer whatsoever even after sending several emails. I haven't asked for access to virtio-gpu driver but only if they can release the virtio.library which is a common part for all virtio drivers so making at least the interface for it public would help others writing network or block driver and prevent having incompatible versions of it as this is needed for all virtio drivers so if they don't publish it others will write their own or each driver will end up with different versions and bugs in something that is best put in a common library and shared between drivers. Hans (who wrote it) also thinks this is a good idea to release this library but I still could not manage to get any answer, even a simple yes or no.
The other thing I asked for is the souces of the U-Boot versions under GPL which they have to publish as we have discussed here before. I have the binaries so I should also have the sources. It's up to them what they do with virtio.library but not answering about the GPL sources is not acceptable and I won't forget about that. I still hope I will get this sorted out sooner than later.

@balaton
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I think this is the best way. I don't have to do anything with the files in the AOS4 system.
Additionally, QEMU does not have to initialize “via-ac97”.
I have not tested whether leaving “via-ac97” has any effect on the operation of the system.I'll check and let you know.

@balaton
Quote:Which U-Boot?
- A-EON is only responsible for the X5000 and A1222+ U-Boot versions.
I doubt it uses anything from the other U-Boot versions, except for the special version of the SciTech x86 emulator (unlike the original SciTech x86 emu source code it has an exception in the licence which allows using and linking it with GPL code for U-Boot), which is available in the DENX U-Boot repository and the Sam4x0 U-Boot sources.
Even booting AmigaOS is different in A-EON's versions of U-Boot, it doesn't use SLB_v2 like the AmigaOne SE/XE/µA1 and and Sam4x0 versions but AmigaBoot.ub, which is similar to the X1000 CFE firmware AmigaBoot.of instead.
- ACube is responsible for the Sam4x0 versions of U-Boot, sources are available on their homepage.
- EyeTech, a company which no longer exists since about 20 years, implemented the AmigaOne SE/XE/µA1 hardware and the U-Boot versions for it. Sources lost.

@joerg
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Exactly those. The source for these should be published the same way ACube publishes the sources for their U-Boot versions. I meant A-Eon when I said AmigaKit as it's the same person just maybe in different role in different companies. But I got still no reply about this at all.