Bochs (x86 emulator) on VGA Zaurus? Anyone? Options

[TonyOlsen]

Ok... so I'll take Qemu off my radar... for now. I'll instead focus on DosBox...

[Miami_Bob]

Well, I an now answer "Yes". I have an older console version of Bochs up & running fairly peppily on a C860 with standard Sharp v1.31 ROM.

There are still some irregularities with the display and it is not in color but I have been able to run a number of older PC/XT DOS apps (no, not CPACK, yet - sorry).

At work & very hectic right now but will make a fuller report soon.

[TonyOlsen]

Wow! I await your findings with great anxiety! Thanks!

[Miami_Bob]

OK. As promised -

Before I describe how I have Bochs running DOS on my C860, you need to be aware of a major, but easily avoidable, hazard.

Bochs is not aware of the event if DOS crashes or terminates. So you do not return to Bochs itself where you could exit gracefully to the bash prompt. Even if you close the terminal, each Bochs session will still be running and using resources blind in the background. PS does not show these sessions. You need to use "PS x" to see their pids.

When I first started working with Bochs, I had several running copies go orphaned in background and the performnce of my C860 began to dramatically drop. I had just opened WhatsUpOnZ to check for & kill any such processes, when my memory bar in the applet tray went abruptly to bright red (the first & only time that I have seen it do so), and my C860 immediately locked up entirely. No responce to ANY keys or stylus.

After pulling the battery several times & a long wait on the final pull, the system booted normally and seemed to be running OK, For all of about 30 seconds, at which point it hard locked again. Each time that I could coax it to reboot, the system would run for some varriable but relatively short period of time and then freeze.

It appears that the sudden low memory condition, caused by multiple rogue copies of Bochs (perhaps 2 or 3 at most), corrupted some system file(s) needed at some point shortly after bootup. I didn't have the luxury time to try to figure out exactly which files were bunged but I had done an NAND backup not long before the crash. So I restored from NAND. And proceeded again with a LOT more caution.

Do NOT allow background sessions of Bochs to build up! After each DOS crash or termination, open another terminal and run "ps x" to get the pid of the Bochs process. Then "kill -kill (pid)" to terminate the session! This is essential. Otherwise you may have a semi-brick! And it wouldn't hurt to do an NAND back up frequently when working with the program.

OK - you have been warned.

This has been tested on C860s with standard Sharp ROM v1.20 & 1.31 with no obvious differences.

First link to:

http://www.ece.uah.edu/~wes/

and download Bochs 1.4.1 from:

http://www.ece.uah.edu/~wes/bochs_1.4.1_arm.ipk

Note that the author says:

" I have misplaced my zaurus and I will not be maintaining the software on this page."

"Bochs x86 emulator. Compiled to use the console, but there's an X option which I didn't use because i'm not running X on my zaurus at the moment. I tested it with freedos, and input was extremely slow. Also, I had to reduce the amount of memory in the bochs settings to keep it from running out of memory and crashing. Still, I think it's really cool that it works at all. There are some demo packages for it here."

("here" is http://bochs.sourceforge.net/diskimages.html)


The IPK is a TAR-GZ type and installed without problems on my C860s. It includeds the two depends lib files. Before you can run Bochs, you need an image of a bootable disk or diskette for the OS you intend to run.

The only DOS at the link to images on Sourceforge is a FreeDOS version which runs VERY slowly under Bochs and crashes frequently for no obvious reason. This was what i was working with when I locked up my C860. I was sufficiently frustrated such that I decided to try making a boot image of PC DOS v7 instead.

Several programs that claimed to write and access these raw sector IMG files produced ones that Bochs could not use. I was finally able to make a Bochs acceptable 1.44Mb FDD IMG using RawWrite for windows version 0.5 by John Newbigin, that I found on a Red Hat distro CD in my stash.

I made a PC DOS v7 bootable 1.44Mb floppy img & a blank 1.44Mb "B:" img using RawWriteW then made a 4Mb "C:" img and a 10Mb "D:" img using the "bxutility" program included with Bochs. The "bxutility" program is simple to use and well documented.

Make sure that your bootable floppy has FDISK, SYS, FORMAT, XCOPY and so forth before you img it.


This is my file layout

/home/QtPalmtop/bochs/

/home/QtPalmtop/bochs/1.4.1 ...... files installed by Bochs

/home/QtPalmtop/bochs/bin ........ img files

/home/QtPalmtop/bochs/latest ..... sym linked by install to 1.4.1


My "bochsrc" config file is:


# configuration file generated by Bochs
romimage: file=/home/QtPalmtop/bochs/1.4.1/BIOS-bochs-latest, address=0xf0000
megs: 4
vgaromimage: /home/QtPalmtop/bochs/1.4.1/VGABIOS-elpin-2.40
floppya: 1_44=/home/QtPalmtop/bochs/bin/a.img, status=inserted
floppyb: 1_44=/home/QtPalmtop/bochs/bin/b.img, status=inserted
diskc: file=/home/QtPalmtop/bochs/bin/4MbC.img, cyl=121, heads=4, spt=17
diskd: file=/home/QtPalmtop/bochs/bin/10MbD.img, cyl=306, heads=4, spt=17
# no parport #1
# no sb16
boot: c
log: /home/zaurus/Documents/bochs/logs/bochs_out.txt
mouse: enabled=0
ips: 500000
vga_update_interval: 30000
keyboard_serial_delay: 20000
keyboard_paste_delay: 100000
floppy_command_delay: 50000
private_colormap: enabled=0
i440fxsupport: enabled=0
time0: 0
# no ne2k
newharddrivesupport: enabled=0
# no loader
panic: action=ask
error: action=report
info: action=report
debug: action=ignore
keyboard_mapping: enabled=0, map=
keyboard_type: mf


To start, change the "boot c" line to "boot a", boot the floppy image, Format C: with the /S option. Copy whatever files that you want. Then switch to your 2nd terminal and "ps x" - "kill -kill (pid)" to terminate the Bochs session.

Now change the boot line back to "boot c" and restart Bochs. You should have DOS from "hd C:".

DOS in a Bochs runs signifiantly faster under opie-embeddedkonsole 1.5.9.2 than it does under qkonsole 0.9.3-20040205. Plus Konsole uses less memory than Qkonsole & Konsole shows the "" char instead of the yen char. Attempto at running in qkonsole "with magnified screen" (ie: in portrait with the keyboard acessable) were excruciatingly slow and had repeated hangs and crashes.

OK. enough for one over long post. I have some more notes that I'll contribute later, but this should be enough to let folks dupliate the process safely.

Some screen shot PHGs are attached in a ZIP to show what you should expect to see.

Feedback, folks?

[padishah_emperor]

Good work Bob, I'm going to have a go this weekend, there are some DOS apps I'd like to try :-)

[Miami_Bob]

Good work Bob, I'm going to have a go this weekend, there are some DOS apps I'd like to try :-)

P_E - The only DOS apps that have failed to run so far are the ones using the APP200 HP-LX calls (of COURSE! .... G). The screen display is in B&W and some what funky at points (you'll see what I mean).

I have run MSD even & gotten system reports! A keyboard monitor that reports which scan codes are actually being generated by key presses & releases. PCTOOLS v4.2, even. QED & LIST. A whole bunch of PC DOS v7 utils. All functional.

But I haven't had time to install & configure keyhelper on the sacrifical C860 yet, so I have not been able to find a way to generate function keys (ie: F1, F2 & etc) or ALT keys, which is a major PITA.

Still & all. only been up & running for two VERY hectic days, so ......

Let me know what you find! (G!)

[Miami_Bob]

Come on, gang. I want to see that first bar in the poll start to climb.

If you voted & can't change or vote twice, then lets start a new thread to reflect the new conditions! (G)

[sepsep]

thanks Bob, great work!

when im back to office i will try.

sepsep
@phuket hoilday

[TonyOlsen]

How does someone gets files in and out of the c.img and d.img files? I assume that when I'm in bochs DOS mode, I can't see the rest of my files outside of the IMG files?

Can someone post the b.img, c.img, and d.img files... everything minus the actual DOS boot image?

I'm excited to try this out!

[Miami_Bob]

How does someone gets files in and out of the c.img and d.img files?  I assume that when I'm in bochs DOS mode, I can't see the rest of my files outside of the IMG files?

Can someone post the b.img, c.img, and d.img files... everything minus the actual DOS boot image?

I'm excited to try this out!

Tony -

So far I haven't found a utility that will write directly to the IMG files without making them unreadable by DOS inna Bochs. Its a major PITA, but I have been copying files to a 1.44 FDD & using RawWrite to make an IMG of the floppy. Then copying them to a HD IMG inside DOS Bochs.

There has to be a more elegant way, but I haven't been able to find it yet. But I HAVE gotten a LOT of practice starting & stopping Bochs! (G)

BTW - The DOS key scan utility shows that KeyHelper passes CTRL key combos through but NOT the ALT key combos. I haven't figured out how to get Keyhelper to fake F1 - F10 yet, either. Time, time, time (sigh).

[Miami_Bob]

BTW - you can use the BXUTILITY from the Bochs IPK to *create* fresh IMG files (in case I wasn't clear about that in my first ramble). Both FDD & HD.

[TonyOlsen]

BTW - you can use the BXUTILITY from the Bochs IPK to *create* fresh IMG files (in case I wasn't clear about that in my first ramble). Both FDD & HD.

Ah... that will come in handy. I'm thinking I could make a d.img of the program DOS program directory I want to use.

As my signature states... this is one of my main Zaurus quests, and I'm very excited to have it running!

Has anyone ventured to try to run GUI programs on Bochs... or even venture to try Windows98SE on it? (I personally don't "need" that, but it would be fun... )

Also, does Bochs work full screen? Some GUI-based DOS apps need the full VGA screen and when you aren't in full screen you can't get that.

[datajerk]

I built the latest version of bochs (2.1.1) and have it running on Xqt. I also built in the VNC protocol. I will try plain text and SDL later, but only if there is interest and only if the performance does suck (e.g. dir<enter>, then d i r appear at one sec interval, then the output (thats fast)). I am using the freedos image link from bochs and it is very slow. Howerver only 4MB of ram is used and it appears stable. I have not tested audio either. I do not know DOS, I thought I'd just take a look at it.

Advice on how to best test this?

Thanks.

[datajerk]

VNC is slow, so slow. I was unable to get tightvnc to work, the Z vncviewer does work, but slow.

[datajerk]

I'd like to build for SDL. Any recommendation on SDL to use?