PowerPC emulation: Qemu, PearPC, or... ?

Question

I'm currently trying to build a configuration to test some code on Big-Endian systems.

Through chats and research, i've been convinced that a good target for these tests would be the PowerPC architecture. Since i don't own one, and don't expect to get direct access to one anytime soon, i'm looking for some kind of emulation software to test my code.

Problem is, i've found no "easy to use" solution in this area.

It seems there are at least 2 possibles solutions, one using QEMU, and the other one using PearPC. None of them is really easy to deploy.

The way i see it :

I would like something as simple as deploying a VMWare virtual machine, with a simple ghost VM ready-to-use and to download.

Additional info : I believe Linux on PowerPC is probably the better OS choice here, since emulating a MAC environment is likely to break license. I guess QEMU is also more up-to-date and supported than PearPC. Host system can be either Windows or Linux. Host CPU must be x86.

Hagan

A good way to learn the architecture is to write your own emulator. – Alcmene

Answer 1

There are some fairly recent Windows Binaries of QEMU available at this address :

http://lassauge.free.fr/qemu/

Furthermore, some Ready-to-download VM for various architectures, including PowerPC, have been prepared by Aurelien Jarno, and can be downloaded at this adress :

http://blog.aurel32.net/46

Hagan

Answer 2

On Windows, the complete steps are-

1. Install Cygwin with all important libraries
2. Download qemu for Windows from - http://lassauge.free.fr/qemu/ and unzip it
3. Now download powerpc VM from http://people.debian.org/~aurel32/qemu/powerpc/ and put it inside qemu folder

4. Now open a cygwin terminal and go to the qemu folder inside the terminal, then type-

   ./qemu-system-ppc -L Bios powerpc_linux.qcow2 -net nic -net user -m 1024

Here only change the VM name powerpc_linux.qcow2 to the correct one.

Haukom

Answer 3

Here is an easy way to start a powerpc virtual machine. https://github.com/nongiach/arm_now

$ sudo pip3 install arm_now
$ arm_now start powerpc64-e5500
Welcome to arm_now
buildroot login: root
# echo "it's done, our vm is started."
it's done, our vm is started.

More example of how to use it: https://github.com/nongiach/arm_now/wiki/5.3-Compile-and-play-2048-on-ARM,-MIPS-and-PowerPc64-within-a-minute

Deadwood

This looks really interesting, but I notice that it only supports some POWER8 and a Power ISA cpu currently. That means there's no Power Mac G5 (which is POWER4) or "PowerPC" emulation. That also means it only supports little endianness, which is not what the OP is asking for. – Scandalmonger