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Full Discussion: Help with old DG/UX machine, virtualizing?
Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users Help with old DG/UX machine, virtualizing? Post 302441572 by dgux on Sunday 1st of August 2010 09:16:20 AM
Old 08-01-2010
Help with old DG/UX machine, virtualizing?
Hey all,
We have an old Data General Unix system (DG/UX) on an old AViiON machine.
That DG system is Intel-based (PentiumPro) and we are trying to virtualize / emulate it.
DG was a clever system, as it cannot be installed on a 'regular' x86 machine, only on an AViiON box. I think I figured out why, and that is why I need your help.
This is my progress so far (after a lot of reading, searching and understanding who is who and what does it all mean) :
1. I've DD'ed an exact copy of the raw system disk as an image on my Linux box.
2. Loaded it up with most virtualization products out there - VMware, VirtualBox, Xen/KVM/Qemu, Bochs and such.
They all work, ie, bootloader works and getting a DG/UX menu to choose my proper kernel/system disk.
3. This is where they fail, as they cannot find the system's original
Adaptec PCI SCSI Controller (which is an AIC-7880 chip).
Most VM products only support LSI/BusLogic SCSI, and IDE of course.
As I see it, there are a few solutions for it to work:
1. write an Adaptec driver for a VM product.
2. write an LSI/BusLogic driver for DG/UX or implement virtio drivers into it.
3. get IDE support working.
1st 2 options, as I understand from software eng' and other professionals, are very difficult to implement.
The 3rd option is interesting :
On one hand, I have an config file with all of DG/UX's supported hardware, IDE is simply not there (would love for someone else to have a look if possible. Just say so and I'll send you the file).
_and_ docs say "Data General has not tested or qualified the use of IDE devices in AViiON AV 2100 systems".
_BUT_, on the other hand, BIOS seems to have plenty of IDE config options and also docs say:
"IDE Interface - Disabled/Auto" , "OnBoard IDE Controller - enabled".
" The AV 2100 board set consists of a system board with six PCI expansion slots, three ISA expansion slots, and several embedded controller devices (PCI video, SCSI, Network, and IDE).
and "..A SCSI-III AIC-7880 controller for connecting up to seven 8-bit narrow SCSI devices. You can also connect a mixture of fifteen 8-bit narrow and 16-bit wide SCSI devices to the controller-maximum of seven 8-bit narrow SCSI devices. PCI-enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) hard disk interface that supports two hard disk drives"
Also " Since the lower bay contains a SCSI CD-ROM drive, only one other SCSI device can be installed. You can install an IDE device in the remaining bay. "
And much more.
The question is, if I have an exact image of the primary disk and I did try to load it via an IDE drive (in Qemu/VirtualBox etc), didn't work out. Like last time, bootloader booted up and then hang after trying to load the kernel.
Is there something I can try and do as a different config in my image file?
Anything else you can think of?
Please let me know if you need any file sent over.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
D.
 

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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

aic

AIC(4)							 BSD/i386 Kernel Interfaces Manual						    AIC(4)

NAME

     aic -- Adaptec AIC-6260 and AIC-6360 SCSI driver

SYNOPSIS

     device aic

     In /boot/device.hints:
     hint.aic.0.at="isa"

DESCRIPTION

     The aic driver provides support for the Adaptec AIC-6260 and AIC-6360 SCSI controller chips.  Many systems that use these controller chips do
     not have a boot ROM and therefore cannot be booted from.

HARDWARE

     The adapters supported by the aic driver include:

     o	 Adaptec AHA-1505 (ISA)
     o	 Adaptec AHA-1510A, AHA-1510B (ISA)
     o	 Adaptec AHA-1520A, AHA-1520B (ISA)
     o	 Adaptec AHA-1522A, AHA-1522B (ISA)
     o	 Adaptec AHA-1535 (ISA)
     o	 Creative Labs SoundBlaster SCSI host adapter (ISA)
     o	 Adaptec AHA-1460, AHA-1460B, AHA-1460C, AHA-1460D (PC Card)
     o	 Adaptec AHA-1030B, AHA-1030P (PC98)
     o	 NEC PC-9801-100 (PC98)

SEE ALSO

     aha(4), ahb(4), ahc(4), cd(4), ch(4), da(4), intro(4), sa(4)

BUGS

     The driver does not work well with multiple devices on the SCSI bus.  The driver works well with devices like CDROMs and Tape drives.  The
     driver works not so well with disk drives.  The PC Card version appears to work better than the ISA version, but that may be due to differing
     levels of testing of the devices.

BSD
								 November 8, 2003							       BSD
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