Install NetBSD 9.2 on a DEC Alpha CPU in QEMU with X11 - Raymii.org

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2021-08-18 07:00:11

This is a guide on installing and running NetBSD for the Alpha CPU architecture on QEMU, including a GUI (X11 via VNC). It requires you to patch and compile QEMU yourself. It was never possible, until now, to run an actual operating system easily with QEMU Alpha, so this is amazing! It is very cool that Jason Thorpe is putting in so much effort on the QEMU side, as all but one patch is upstream already. Alpha emulation has always been a niche of a niche, so seeing this improve in QEMU is wonderful. OpenVMS does not boot yet since many more things are missing on the QEMU side, but who knows what the future might bring? Maybe even Windows NT for Alpha will boot on QEMU one day?

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This article is based on work by astr0baby/DoktorCranium and his twitter screenshots. His guide is quite sparse, which I try to improve with this one. astr0baby does a lot of cool emulation stuff, his twitter is full of screenshots of his M1 Macbook running all kinds of legacy operating systems, from AIX to OpenVMS to MorphOS on whatever old CPU you can think of.