[9fans] Parallels/Mac Build 5582 almost works

["Lawrence E. Bakst" <ml@iridescent.org>]

It's been a long time since I installed plan9. I was able to install a very recent build of plan9 (12/1) under the latest Parallels/Mac Build 5582 and get the the point where I can log in as Glenda. I am using a 2.6 GGz, 18" MB Pro, if that matters.

It runs at the highest acceleration level with VT-X support but I installed it with no acceleration and VT-X support off.

Issues:

1. pcirouting: South bridge FFFF, FFFF not found

2. boot from floppy doesn't seem to be able to detect the CD

3. boot from CD, after choosing Install (option 1) I get
"Unknown boot device: sdD0!cdboot!9pcflop.gz"
Boot devices: fd0"

Choosing "sdC1! cdboot!9pcflop.gz" worked for me.

4. If you install the plan9 MBR which claims to be able to read past 2 GB it doesn't seem to be able to find what I put at > 2 GB.

5. I used a 8 GB virtual disk with a 1 GB fat32 partition first. I used a win98 startup disk to make that fs using fdisk.

6. I used the undocumented /MBR switch to fdisk to install the win98 MBR.

7. Booting from disk seems to work.

8. Making the boot floppy fails because it wants "sdD0" as in step 3, but there is not way to override "sdD0".

9. The worst issue for me is that 3 button mouse emulation in Parallels seems to unsupported or broken. I can get the button 3 popup menu, by using button-2, but as soon as I move my finger on the trackpad, the menu goes away. Maybe I'm confused about all this, but I've used Acme before I could not make a new window and get a shell or do an ls in acme. I know I could use drawterm.

I filed two support requests with Parallels:

1. I requested that Parallels make plan9 a supported OS or at least do QA on it with each new release.

2. I requested support for a 3 button mouse with the defaults for button-2 (cmd) and button-3 (opt). These have been Apple standard since the dawn of the Macintosh although this is little known. If you don't believe me get an original Mac and Apple Smalltalk run it or check the doc.
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~leb