Internet in Xenix on QEMU

It is now possible to get onto the internet in Xenix with QEMU thanks to a recent discovery. This works in all versions of QEMU.

File:Install-Xenix-DLINK-NE2000.png

How to do it

• Step 1: Obviously, install QEMU.

I recommend either two versions: QEMU 0.90, or QEMU 3.1. QEMU 0.90 is ancient but it will run Xenix the fastest out of any emulator. The trade off is that the floppy emulation in 0.90 is poor and doesn't work correctly in Xenix, so copying the drivers can be a huge pain. QEMU 3.1 runs it slower, but is much easier to copy the files on over because the floppy emulation works fairly well.

• Step 2: Grabbing the D-Link DE-100/DE-200 drivers for Xenix

D-Link released the DE-200 drivers for Xenix back in July of 1992. As it turns out, the DE-200 is actually an NE2000 compatible card, and thus will work with QEMU's NE2000 network emulation!

Grab the necessary files on GitHub by clicking here: [1]. Obviously, extract the "de200.img" file somewhere.

• Step 3: Install Xenix onto QEMU if you haven't already

I won't describe how to do this here because it's lengthy, but I might write a tutorial later. The arguments you should use are this:

QEMU 0.90:

qemu -L pc-bios -m 16 -net nic,model=ne2k_isa -net user -redir tcp:42323::23 -hda xenix.qcow2

QEMU 3.1:

qemu-system-i386 -net none -L . -m 16 -hda xenix.qcow2 -device ne2k_isa,mac=00:2e:3c:92:11:01,netdev=lan,irq=10,iobase=0x320 -netdev user,id=lan,hostfwd=tcp::42323-:23

• Step 4: Untar the floppy and install the driver

Insert the floppy by pressing CTRL-ALT-2 then typing change floppy0 de200.img. Then untar the floppy under Xenix by typing tar -xvf /dev/fd0. Perform the installation by typing mkdev dlnk

• Step 5: Additional configuration

The installer does a pretty bad job at setting up the NIC, so you will want to edit the /etc/tcp file and change the ifconfig line to this:

ifconfig dlink0 10.0.2.15 -trailers broadcast 10.0.2.255 netmask 255.255.255.0

File:Xenix-telnet-login.png

(Thanks to: Neozeed for the screenshots, and the tutorial)