QEMU/PowerPC
QEMU can emulate the PowerPC architecture. It is able to emulate several machines which can each run a handful of operating systems, which will be documented below.
Platforms
The following machines can be emulated. To see a full list type qemu-system-ppc --M help.
| Model | Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 40p | IBM RS/6000 7020 (40p) (1990) | Can run some versions of AIX |
| bamboo | bamboo board | First PowerPC machine emulated by QEMU |
| g3beige | Heathrow based PowerMAC (1997) | |
| mac99 | Mac99 based PowerMAC (1999) | Can run Mac OS 9.2 - 10.5 and some Linux distros |
| mpc8544ds | Mpc8544ds dev board | |
| none | Empty machine | |
| pegasos2 | Genesi/bPlan Pegasos II | Can run AmigaOS 4.1 and some other Amiga-like OSes |
| ppce500 | Generic paravirt e500 platform | |
| ref405ep | ref405ep | Needs a file named ppc405_rom.bin which does not seem to be available anymore |
| sam460ex | aCube Sam460ex | Can run AmigaOS 4.1 FE and some others |
| virtex-ml507 | Xilinx Virtex ML507 reference design |
Machines
IBM RS/6000 7020 (40p)
Workstation from ~1994. QEMU emulates the following peripherals for this machine:
- PCI bridge
- PCI VGA compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions
- 2 IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support
- Floppy disk
- PCnet network adapters
- Serial port
- PREP Non Volatile RAM
- PC compatible keyboard and mouse.
To start a very simple emulation that'll boot into OpenBIOS:
qemu-system-ppc -M 40p -boot c
Current OS compatibility sheet
| Operating system | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AIX 3.2 | Not working | OS hangs indefinitely |
| AIX 4.3 | Working | |
| AIX 5.1 | Working | The PCnet driver does not work in this OS; seems to be a bug with the emulation |
| Windows NT 3.51 SP5 | Not working | Incompatible with OpenBIOS |
| Windows NT 4.0 RTM | Not working | Incompatible with OpenBIOS |
Guest installation instructions
AIX 4.3
To boot AIX you need a custom BIOS with serial as the console. Fortunately Artyom Tarasenko has done the hard work for us and made a BIOS that works with QEMU. Download it using wget or similar:
wget https://github.com/artyom-tarasenko/openfirmware/releases/download/40p-20190413/q40pofw-serial.rom
Then create the hard disk image:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 aix.qcow2 8G
You can download the AIX 4.3.3 CDs from WinWorldPC: https://winworldpc.com/product/aix/43x
Finally, boot QEMU with the following arguments:
qemu-system-ppc -M 40p -bios q40pofw-serial.rom -serial telnet::4441,server -hda aix.qcow2 -vga none -nographic -net none -cdrom Volume_1.iso
If you have a physical CD, you can replace -cdrom Volume_1.iso with -cdrom /dev/sr0.
Telnet into port 4441 and begin the installation.
AIX 5.1
Mostly the same as 4.3. Again, you need to download a custom BIOS with serial as the console. The link for that is in the above section.
Create the hard disk image:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 aix.qcow2 8G
You can download AIX 5.1 CDs from WinWorld (you only need the first 3 CDs): https://winworldpc.com/product/aix/51
Boot QEMU with these arguments:
qemu-system-ppc -M 40p -bios q40pofw-serial.rom -serial telnet::4441,server -hda aix.qcow2 -nic user -vga none -nographic -cdrom AIX_CD_1.iso
If you have a physical CD, you can replace -cdrom Volume_1.iso with -cdrom /dev/sr0.
Telnet into port 4441 and begin the installation.
Bamboo
PPC440 embedded board, was initially used for KVM on the PPC440 (which has since been removed.) You can boot a Linux kernel on this board by downloading this image (you may have to right click and hit "Save Link"), extracting it, and booting QEMU with this:
qemu-system-ppc -kernel linux -initrd rootfs.cpio.gz -M bamboo -netdev user,id=u1 -device rtl8139,netdev=u1 -vga none -nographic