Running NetBSD on emulated hardware
About NetBSD on emulators
Software emulators
About NetBSD on emulators
Where can I purchase VAXen? (top)
If you are developer of embedded applications, or if you need to demonstrate or test your software on hardware platform that is not available for some reason, you definitively need a software emulator. Sometimes emulator becomes even an ultimate solutions allowing to run whole computer networks on the single machine. At last, you may want to see (just for fun) how have performed such dinosaurs as old good PDPs and VAXes.
This document is intended to describe where to find deserving equivalents of various hardware in order to set up and running NetBSD Operating System.
How to setup NetBSD on an emulator (top)
An answer to this question mainly depends on which emulator you use. Very often an emulator's home site contains all information you may need to setup a guest operating system, including NetBSD. Please refer to the section called “Software emulators” for details.
NetBSD ports and emulators matrix (top)
| Ports \ Emulators | bochs | gxemul | pearpc | qemu | simh | simics | ski | tme |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| amd64 | Untested | Yes | Yes | |||||
| arc | Yes | |||||||
| cats | Yes | |||||||
| cobalt | Yes | |||||||
| evbarm | Almost[a] | |||||||
| evbmips | Yes | |||||||
| hpcmips | Yes | |||||||
| i386 | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| ia64 | Experimental[b] | |||||||
| macppc | Almost[c] | Untested | ||||||
| pmax | Yes | |||||||
| prep | Almost[d] | Untested | ||||||
| sgimips | Yes | |||||||
| sun2 | Yes | |||||||
| sun3 | Yes | |||||||
| vax | Yes | |||||||
|
[a] NetBSD 2.1 can be installed but some programs such as gcc cannot be run inside [that instance of] NetBSD. NetBSD 3.x isn't supported yet at all. [b] Used as platform for NetBSD/ia64 port development. [c] Crashes while booting. [d] Experimental; not 100% stable. | ||||||||
Software emulators
Bochs (top)
The program bochs is a highly portable open source x86 PC emulator written in C++, and runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common IO devices, and a custom BIOS. Currently, bochs can be compiled to emulate a 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium PRO or AMD64 CPU.
Packaged as emulators/bochs.
GXemul (top)
GXemul is a machine emulator. The initial goal was to write a simple 64-bit MIPS emulator for running multiprocessor experiments with a microkernel, but the emulator can be used for many other things. While some simulators only simulate a CPU, GXemul also simulates other hardware components, making it possible to use the emulator to run unmodified operating systems, such as NetBSD, OpenBSD, or Linux.
Packaged as emulators/gxemul.
QEMU (top)
QEMU is a FAST! processor emulator using dynamic translation to achieve good emulation speed, QEMU has two operating modes:
- Full system emulation. In this mode, QEMU emulates a full system (for example a PC), including a processor and various peripherals. It can be used to launch different Operating Systems without rebooting the PC or to debug system code.
- User mode emulation (Linux host only). In this mode, QEMU can launch Linux processes compiled for one CPU on another CPU. It can be used to launch the Wine Windows API emulator or to ease cross-compilation and cross-debugging.
Packaged as emulators/qemu.
PearPC (top)
PearPC is an architecture-independent PowerPC platform emulator capable of running most PowerPC operating systems.
Packaged as emulators/pearpc.
SIMH (top)
SIMH is Bob Supnik's historical computer simulator, including: altair altairz80 eclipse gri h316 hp2100 i1401 i1620 ibm1130 id16 id32 nova pdp1 pdp10 pdp11 pdp15 pdp4 pdp7 pdp8 pdp9 s3 sds vax. See NetBSD SIMH HOW-TO for instructions on how to install NetBSD/vax on simh.
Packaged as emulators/simh.
Ski (top)
Ski is an HP-proprietary instruction-set simulator for the IA-64 (Itanium Processor Family, IPF) architecture and is intended primarily for application- and kernel-level software development.
Packaged as emulators/ski.
The Machine Emulator (top)
The Machine Emulator, or tme, is a program that provides a general-purpose framework for computer emulation. The first machine that tme could emulate was the Sun 2/120, one of the first widely available Sun workstations. Currently, it includes support for Sun 3/150 as well.
Packaged as emulators/tme.
Virtutech Simics simulator (top)
Software developers writing code for non-desktop systems often face a problem: on what do they run their code to test and debug it? Simics Developer makes it possible to run any electronic system on the developer's desktop machine. This is true for small embedded systems, million dollar enterprise servers or complex clustered multiprocessor systems.
Commercial product.
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