From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 09:04:11 +0000 From: David Bulkow Message-ID: <39DF3FB0.71FF0963@earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <20001006170643.81AE3199F7@mail>, <200010061802.TAA13618@cthulhu.dircon.co.uk> Subject: Re: [9fans] REQ Info: Plan9 VMware Session? Topicbox-Message-UUID: 15b86276-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 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