Re: [9fans] REQ Info: Plan9 VMware Session?

[David Bulkow <dbul@earthlink.net>]

The ethernet is indeed the AMD PCnet-PCI, but VMWare does not support 32-bit
register access.  There is more lurking though, because after I changed the
register commands to 16-bit I was still unable to coax an interrupt from the
device.  After reading back the initialization parameters to verify I was sending
it correctly I was stumped.  Work took over and I haven't been back to the code
:-(

Digby Tarvin wrote:

> >       Has anyone gotten Plan9 to run (heck, to even install) under a VMware
> >       session?
> >
> > I briefly lookde at this when it came up on the mailing list a while ago.
> > VMware presents some 'hardware' in the virtual machine for which we have no
> > drivers, e.g. the ethernet controller and the graphics chip. I believe
> > the ethernet controller is a variant on the AMD controller for which we do
> > have a driver, so that can probably be fixed easily. I've no idea what the
> > graphics controller looks like.
> >
> > If I could be bothered installing NT or Linux on a system here I'd take a
> > closer look.
> >
> > --jim
> >
> I have looked into this also. Unfortunately the virtual machine does not
> seem to emulate any standard graphics controller except in VGA mode,
> and the response I got from VMWare when I enquired was that they
> consider the interface details to be proprietary.
>
> They seem to think that getting reasonable graphics performance
> requires clever tricks that give them an edge over potential
> competitors. I suspect it is not handled as a 'virtual device'
> but rather handles the display by communicating requests to the
> host operating system.
>
> Thus unless you can work with a VGA screen, you are restricted to
> guest operating systems for which VMware have deemed to make
> display drivers available. I have not checked, but that would
> seem to indicate that the Linux driver is provided as binary
> only. Does anyone know if that is really the case?
>
> Of course it still seems that getting the network driver going
> is a rather essential first step before being able to do anything
> useful with a guest Plan9 system. Then at least a guest file and/or
> cpu server should be a possibility. Their docs suggest this is
> an 'AMD PCnet-PCI II' compatible.
>
> The SCSI is 'BusLogic BT-958' and sound is 'Sound Blaster 16'.
>
> I am planning to install Linux on one of my systems in a couple of
> weeks when things are a little less busy here to do some experimenting.
>
> Until then I am only working on what I have been told...
>
> Regards,
> DigbyT
> --
> Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
> http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk