GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

About Qemu-system-ppc, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, macOS and Linux that can run Mac OS 9.0 up to Mac OS X 10.5

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Cat_7
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

Hi,

I created new sound enabled (screamer) builds for OSX and Windows.

OSX: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=8848#p52104
Windows: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=9028

My current experiences with them are:
-The windows build performs slightly less well compared to the OSX build.
-You need the most recent Quicktime and iTunes installed in the various guests for best performance.
-10.4 and 10.5 guests can play internet radio with some crackling (like playing an old scratched record).
-Starting the sound control panel in OSX guests when already playing music creates havoc in the audio stream.
-Moving the whole window in which the guest runs disrupts the stream in Windows host, but not in OSX host.
-9.x are still the best for audio playback.
-I experimented with various variables available for controlling the audio, but haven't found a perfect mix.

Please report your experience,

Best,
Cat_7
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by dipper »

Do you happen to have a link to the source that was used to create the binaries? Has any attempt been made to build them on 64-bit Linux? Just to clarify, the screamer builds do have a hard requirement on iTunes and QuickTime for audio support?
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

Hi,

The screamer source code is at:
https://github.com/mcayland/qemu/tree/screamer

I build on Linux regularly, but the sound performance is no better there.

iTunes and QuickTime are not strictly required.

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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by celebi23 »

Cat_7 wrote:Hi,

I created new sound enabled (screamer) builds for OSX and Windows.

OSX: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=8848#p52104
Windows: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=9028

My current experiences with them are:
-The windows build performs slightly less well compared to the OSX build.
-You need the most recent Quicktime and iTunes installed in the various guests for best performance.
-10.4 and 10.5 guests can play internet radio with some crackling (like playing an old scratched record).
-Starting the sound control panel in OSX guests when already playing music creates havoc in the audio stream.
-Moving the whole window in which the guest runs disrupts the stream in Windows host, but not in OSX host.
-9.x are still the best for audio playback.
-I experimented with various variables available for controlling the audio, but haven't found a perfect mix.

Please report your experience,

Best,
Cat_7
Not sure what I'm doing wrong. I've got iTunes 2.0.4 and Quicktime 6.0.3 installed under 9.2.2. Audio is glitchy at best and most of the time is nonexistent completely :sad: This has been the result for every screamer build. This is my one tiny problem with Qemu. Everything else is awesome. Never thought I'd be running 9.2.2 like this. If I can figure out the audio problem, it'd be almost perfect.

Here's my Qemu launch command:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
cd "$(dirname "$0")"
./qemu-system-ppc64 -L pc-bios -boot c -M mac99 -cpu G4 -m 1536 -prom-env 'auto-boot?=true' -prom-env 'boot-args=-v' -prom-env 'vga-ndrv?=true' -drive file=MacintoshHD.dmg,format=raw,media=disk -drive file=AdobeMac.dmg,format=raw,media=disk -netdev user,id=network0 -device sungem,netdev=network0 -device usb-mouse -device usb-kbd
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by adespoton »

I'm having an intersting issue: with the new build, -rtc base="2000-12-25",clock="vm" is being ignored, which is a problem for the OS X Public Beta. -rtc base="2000-12-25",clock="rt" returns the same result -- "OSXPB has expired".

Anyone know what might be going wrong? This works fine in all other builds of qemu I've tried.
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by adespoton »

You can ignore my previous post -- the issue is that sungem is working correctly with the PB now, and so NTP is updating the time after I've set it but before the OS checks it :} Turning off the network connection fixes that, and everything's happy.
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Programmingkid »

Cat_7 wrote:Hi,

I created new sound enabled (screamer) builds for OSX and Windows.

OSX: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=8848#p52104
Windows: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=9028

My current experiences with them are:
-The windows build performs slightly less well compared to the OSX build.
-You need the most recent Quicktime and iTunes installed in the various guests for best performance.
-10.4 and 10.5 guests can play internet radio with some crackling (like playing an old scratched record).
-Starting the sound control panel in OSX guests when already playing music creates havoc in the audio stream.
-Moving the whole window in which the guest runs disrupts the stream in Windows host, but not in OSX host.
-9.x are still the best for audio playback.
-I experimented with various variables available for controlling the audio, but haven't found a perfect mix.

Please report your experience,

Best,
Cat_7
I am using Mac OS 9.2.2 with the USB audio device. Audio (when it does work) plays perfectly for about 30 seconds. Then it stops playing. I'm not sure what changed but this is definitely a huge improvement for the USB audio device playback. I have Quicktime 5.0.2, iTunes 2.0.4, and QEMU 3.0.91 (v3.1.0-rc1-dirty).
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

What happens when you use your default sound device on the host?

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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Programmingkid »

Cat_7 wrote:What happens when you use your default sound device on the host?

Best,
Cat_7
I used the USB audio device that comes with QEMU. I have experiemented with using a real USB sound card in QEMU. The results were not good.
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by J. Gryphon »

Cat_7 wrote:Hi,

The screamer source code is at:
https://github.com/mcayland/qemu/tree/screamer

I build on Linux regularly, but the sound performance is no better there.
Do you have any tips for improving Linux performance? I made a build from that source on Ubuntu 18.10 and the speed is pretty atrocious compared to the OS X pre-built binary, on the same machine.
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

Are you talking about the screamer builds in both cases? And when doing what?

I regularly test their speeds in 9.2 with MacBench. OSX and Linux builds have more or less the same speed. Only the Windows builds lag by some 10%.

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Cat_7
J. Gryphon
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by J. Gryphon »

It should be Screamer for both, since that's the main build I use and care much about. The general performance is visually more sluggish with the motion on the screen being more choppy than I recall in OS X. Also, there's some benchmarks with Speedometer below. "Qemu 9.1" is the tested performance of the machine in OS X; the others are with my Linux build, set to emulate G4 and G3 processors respectively, in the start command.

Image
Image

It's my experience that there's naturally some variation in whetstone results, so that doesn't bother me much, but the lag elsewhere is concerning.
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

Hi,

I uploaded two new experimental Qemu builds for OSX and Windows hosts:

One with some altivec acceleration (noticeable in slightly improved display speed).
One with the same improvements, but also supporting the screamer audio device.

OSX: Get them here...
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=8848&p=52104#p52104

Windows: get them here...
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=9028&p=53788#p53788

Best,
Cat_7
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by adespoton »

So the OS X hardware has to be 2014 or later, as AVX2 was introduced with the Haswell architecture; Sandy Bridge (2011) and Ivy Bridge (2012) don't have it.

That said, I don't think I'd want to attempt running OS X on QEMU-PPC on anything older than a 2014 Mac anyway; it'd be an awfully painful experience. PearPC would be a much better option there.
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

That said, I don't think I'd want to attempt running OS X on QEMU-PPC on anything older than a 2014 Mac anyway; it'd be an awfully painful experience. PearPC would be a much better option there.
Were it not that there is no jit enabled pearpc build for OSX ;-)

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Cat_7
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by adespoton »

Back on my Core 2 Duo, I used PearPC Redscorp in a WineSkin. It had JIT and it outperformed the native OS X build :)
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Ministar48 »

Cat_7 wrote:Hi,

I uploaded two new experimental Qemu builds for OSX and Windows hosts:

One with some altivec acceleration (noticeable in slightly improved display speed).
One with the same improvements, but also supporting the screamer audio device.

Note that the OSX builds will only run on CPUs supporting the AVX2 extensions.

OSX: Get them here...
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=8848&p=52104#p52104

Windows: get them here...
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=9028&p=53788#p53788

Best,
Cat_7
Does the altivec acceleration require AVX2 on Windows?
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

I erroneously assumed the Altivec acceleration could only be achieved when compiling with support for AVX2 extensions.
Mark pointed out to me that Qemu can decide when to use the acceleration at runtime.

I fixed the OSX downloads, so they now also run on machines not supporting AVX2.

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Cat_7
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

Does the altivec acceleration require AVX2 on Windows?
No, the windows builds run fine without.

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Cat_7
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

From the qemu development list:
At least two machines, the PPC mac99 and MIPS fulong2e, have an ATI
gfx chip by default (Rage 128 Pro and M6/RV100 respectively) and
guests running on these and the PMON2000 firmware of the fulong2e
expect this to be available. Fortunately these are very similar chips
so they can be mostly emulated in the same device model. This patch
adds basic emulation of these ATI VGA chips.
Our openbios does not yet seem to support loading the required ati rom, but who knows, it might soon do ;-)

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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by adespoton »

Great news! Props to whosever submitted that; I know that basic gfx emulation isn't easy.
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

Here are two images showing that the ati kext gets loaded in OSX Leopard and that the properties are shown in the device tree. The properties, however, were already available in Openbios. It seems the ati driver makes Openbios select these in the tree.
The kext does something, as the mouse disappears and only reappears after moving the mouse to the dock. However, the actual payload from the rom is not loaded. Also, the kexts stem from Tiger (which has the kexts available by default). Not all kext/bundles can be used: Including the ATIRage128GA.bundle (Graphics Acceleration) leads to a completely distorted screen.

I have no idea how to get this further... I read up on Darthnvaders endeavour into getting a nvidia 6600 rom to load, but all of that is way beyond my understanding....

Image

Image

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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by 24bit »

Still your screenshots do look promising, Cat_7!
Same procedure with Tiger?
Many kexts did not work well when moved from 10.4 to 10.5.
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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by Cat_7 »

Yes, for Tiger the same kext has to be removed.

However, as this does not offload work to an actual GPU, speed improvement will not be likely.

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Re: GSOC qemu Boot Mac OS >= 8.5 on PowerPC system

Post by adespoton »

The check would be to see if Bugdom runs....
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