[geeks] Fun with QEMU

[Lionel Peterson]

Hello all,

Last night, I was sorting thru some old papers and came across some pages I
printed out about Charon, the free SPARC emulation software that Stromsys
offered for limited personal use. Well, I went online to see if it was still
available, and it was not. Sigh. I threw away the printouts and went
a-googling.

I soon landed on a web page posted by Adafruit that claimed to walk the reader
through the steps to emulate an SS5 w/ 128 Meg of RAM & 9 gig HD. Intrigued, I
downloaded the latest copy of QEMU for Windows and a copy of Solaris (2.6.598)
for SPARC and set about following the steps. I had some challenges - I have
notes if anyone wants more detail, but they involved the file compression used
for the Solaris image (~400 megs), I think it was 7z, and the undocumented
need to add the QEMU folder to the PATH environment variable.

Those challenges overcome, in short order I had a Solaris 2.6 "SPARC" machine
running on my windows desktop, and I have to admit, I had a big goofy smile on
my face, it's been years since I sat in front of a CDE desktop.

The Adafruit link is here:

https://learn.adafruit.com/build-your-own-sparc-with-qemu-and-solaris

They also mention a guy that sells Sun2USB adapters so you can use a Sun Type
5c keyboard with a PC or (I assume) Mac:

https://drakware.com/product/Sun2USB

The install image of Solaris was gotten from here:

https://winworldpc.com/product/sun-solaris/2x

(Other versions, Solaris 7 and 8 were also available)

And, if you're not a Windows Wizard, here's the resource I used to add the
QEMU folder to my PATH:

https://www.architectryan.com/2018/03/17/add-to-the-path-on-windows-10

If you know someone that wants to dink around with 'classic' Solaris but isn't
interested in trying to resurrect 30 year-old hardware, this is a great start.
I was impressed how easy it was to setup, and the performance seemed fine on a
10 year-old Windows machine (i5-2xxx CPU). I struggled a bit understanding how
QEMU handles capturing/releasing the mouse, but I was able to figure it out.

Yes, I could have installed x86 Solaris in a hypervisor, like virtual box, but
I felt there were a few more 'geek points' to be gotten by emulating a SPARC
processor on my Windows box, and the Adafruit page describes not only Windows
install, but touches on Mac and Linux installs also.

Thought some here might find it interesting,

Ken