[Qemu-devel] Re: Completing big real mode emulation

[Alexander Graf]

On 20.03.2010, at 09:39, Avi Kivity wrote:

> On 03/20/2010 10:34 AM, Alexander Graf wrote:
>> 
>> Interestingly enough Hannes just tried to boot a Windows 98 VM on SVM 
>> yesterday and failed, while the same VM worked (mostly) with -no-kvm. So 
>> apparently there's more missing to it than just big real mode.
>>   
> 
> Was there an error message?

He got one. I just tried to boot up my test VM and it just hanged in that empty 
DOS prompt.

> 
>> I'd say that a GSoC project would rather focus on making a guest OS work 
>> than working on generic big real mode. Having Windows 98 support is way more 
>> visible to the users. And hopefully more fun to implement too, as it's a 
>> visible goal :-).
>>   
> 
> Big real mode allows you to boot various OSes, such as that old Ubuntu/SuSE 
> boot loader which triggered the whole thing.

I thought legacy Windows uses it too?

Either way - then we should make the goal of the project to support those old 
boot loaders. IMHO it should contain visibility. Doing theoretical stuff is 
just less fun for all parties. Or does that stuff work already?


Alex