Virtualising and 3dnow woes on a Mac

[Ton van Overbeek]

Torello Querci wrote:
> Hi
>
> Alle lunedì 14 luglio 2008, pyramind ha scritto:
>   
>> Hello,
>>
>> I made a search in the list but couldn't find a solution. I'm running Os X
>> Leopard and want to use qemu to emulate the os and start developing.
>> However I'm getting problems.
>>
>> I'm following the directions here:
>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images#Latest_Stable_Build
>>
>> and got my image from here:
>> http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/xo-1/streams/joyride/latest/devel_ext3/
>>
>> When I try to boot the image, the kernel complains about 3dnow not being
>> present in the cpu(which is not emulated with Q in macs), and I don't know
>> what to do now from here.
>>     
> Me too.
> Fortunally I have 2 machine: one laptop with intel and a desktop with AMD so I 
> use the desktop for my test.
> I already ask about this problem but seems that at the moment only one kernel 
> is build with 3dnow extension enabled. I hope for the next build.
>
>   
>> Any suggestions?
>>     
> Personally I install a FC9 on my virtualizzazione system and build all the 
> sugar environment to make my test. You can use this way but it is right only 
> if you want develop for XO (I suppose).
>   
I am running into the same problem.
This is caused by a change in the linux kernel boot code sine 2.6.24 (?, 
not sure of exact version, but somewhere between
2.6.22 used in FC7 and 2.6.25 used in FC9). In 2.6.25 the boot code 
checks for CPU features and bails out
if it does not find them.
In the SVN version of qemu there is already a patch to provide 3dnow 
instructions when you select cpu type
athlon. I am planning on backporting this to qemu 0.9.1 and try it out.
The current svn version of qemu also requires a rebuild of kqemu due to 
an API change introduced at the end of May.
Hence my idea of backporting the patch to 0.9.1 to avoid to rebuild 
kqemu (I am on Win XP/SP2).
I'll keep the list posted on my qemu attempts ...

Regards,

Ton van Overbeek