[Qemu-discuss] SunOS 4.1.4 / Solaris 1.1.2 on qemu-system-sparc 2.4

[Maximilian Heise]

Hello Everybody,

my name is Max, I have been using qemu for Intel processors before, but
not for old SUN Sparc machines before.

One of my SS20s, which are running a old but perfectly working custom
CAD/CAM/CIM solution recently had a harddrive failure. I have backups
and installation media, so no big deal. However that hard drive failure
prompted me to google if there was a way to run Solaris with version 2.7
or 1.1.2 inside an emulator.

To my great surprise I found an explanation on howto install SunOS 4.1.4
and it worked after I compiled a new qemu version myself. Some further
googling showed me how to load the original cg3 firmware and now I even
have X11 up and running in 1152x900.
http://imagebin.ca/v/2Ert5b6VRnPl <= Screenshot of the openwin/X11
desktop in qemu

My shell script currently contains this:

#!/bin/bash
QEMU_SYSTEM_SPARC=/home/user/programs/qemu/qemu-2.4.0/sparc-softmmu/qemu-system-sparc
OBP_ROM=/home/user/data/qemu-sparc/sun_sparc_rom_obp/ss5.bin
SYSTEM_DISK_IMAGE=/home/user/data/qemu-sparc/sunos414.img
${QEMU_SYSTEM_SPARC}    -monitor tcp::4444,server,nowait \
                        -L "$PWD" \
                        -name vm-idefix \
                        -k de \
                        -M SS-5 \
                        -bios "$OBP_ROM" \
                        -m 128 \
                        -vga cg3 \
                        -g 1152x900 \
                        -net nic \
                        -drive
file="$SYSTEM_DISK_IMAGE",media=disk,if=scsi,bus=0,unit=3

What I noticed while doing this 4.1.4 install on
qemu-system-sparc+questions:

1. There is a cdrom device appearing in qemu out of nowhere, where does
it come from and how do I disable it ? It is on scsi id 2, which is
wrong for SunOS 4.1.4 and I did not enable it myself.
http://imagebin.ca/v/2ErsOVlZjbK6 <- Screenshot of probe-scsi in OBP.

2. The installation as described here:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QEMU/SunOS_4.1.4 works, but is a bit
painful because qemu's cdrom driver probably has the wrong blocksize of
512 and not 2048 bytes, line SunOS 4 required it to be and because the
wrong scsi ids are used.
So is there a way to configure the blocksize of a device somewhere ? How
is this done for 512 and 4k discs for example ?
Because if I start the installation with these lines:
-drive file="$SYSTEM_DISK_IMAGE",media=disk,if=scsi,bus=0,unit=3 \
-drive file="$INSTALL_MEDIA_IMAGE",media=cdrom,if=scsi,bus=0,unit=6
Then the scsi ids are right for installing SunOS 4.1.4. Because of this
blocksize problem however one has to use the cdrom as a disk at the
moment or it will not work.

3. How do I set the bloody keymap ?
-k de
does not work for me. I have a German keyboard on my laptop and desktop,
but qemu still gives me an English layout no matter if I use "-k de" or not.

4. The SS5 was suggested in the installation guide, could anybody
comment on how well the SS20 works for example with qemu-system-sparc ?

5. How can I save nvram content in qemu-system-sparc between
power-cycles ? Is there a way ?

BR
Max.