Pandora Wine Working On N900 - Maybe Pandora?

[marovada]

Someone has got some basic windows programs (eg solitaire) running on the N900 with a build of QEMU-i386, WINE and a chroot. Apparently the virtual machine equates to a P90 with 256MB of ram - perfect for a lot of pre-3d accelerated windows games.

I've tried to do something similar for the Pandora but failed to even get the x86 version of ls running for some reason. Maybe the build being used of QEMU-i386 isn't compatible with the ARM chip in the Pandora.

I'm also not a linux expert, so I thought maybe one of our heroes like Stuckie could give it a try.

Here is the N900 forum link at the 'How to" page: N900 page

There are also several other links on this topic:

qemu forum
mail archive
old Zaurus thread
original topic in 2005

 

[God Ginrai]

Someone has got some basic windows programs (eg solitaire) running on the N900 with a build of QEMU-i386, WINE and a chroot. Apparently the virtual machine equates to a P90 with 256MB of ram - perfect for a lot of pre-3d accelerated windows games.

I've tried to do something similar for the Pandora but failed to even get the x86 version of ls running for some reason. Maybe the build being used of QEMU-i386 isn't compatible with the ARM chip in the Pandora.

I'm also not a linux expert, so I thought maybe one of our heroes like Stuckie could give it a try.

Here is the N900 forum link at the 'How to" page: N900 page

There are also several other links on this topic:

qemu forum
mail archive
old Zaurus thread
original topic in 2005

Umm... Don't the N900 and the Pandora have the same ARM processor?

-God Ginrai

 

[CPUnltd]

same or similar, but other architecture of the devices could play a role in the program not running by default... question is, what kinds of errors are you getting when you follow the tutorial and where in the tutorial are you getting those errors? I'm sure this can be bugfixed to function, just a matter of getting the necessary info (of course, I'm wondering what games you would need this elaborate setup for that dosbox and the current pc emulator can't handle or don't have...

 

[Prometheus]

of course, I'm wondering what games you would need this elaborate setup for that dosbox and the current pc emulator can't handle or don't have...

Two words and a number: Jazz Jackrabbit 2. It ran full-speed on a Pentium 75 with 8MB of RAM, and had an excellent online mode that worked over a 33.3k modem.

[/off-topic]

 

[trix]

I'm thinking Rolemaster: Magestorm Win95 game that has a revival project at extrinsicality.net
Having that game on the Pandora is one of my biggest dreams!

- trix

 

[marovada]

same or similar, but other architecture of the devices could play a role in the program not running by default... question is, what kinds of errors are you getting when you follow the tutorial and where in the tutorial are you getting those errors? I'm sure this can be bugfixed to function, just a matter of getting the necessary info (of course, I'm wondering what games you would need this elaborate setup for that dosbox and the current pc emulator can't handle or don't have...

I tried something simpler than the tutorial to start off with. I loaded the qemu-i386 test files from the qemu site that include basic x86 linux libraries and binaries. The 'ls' binary is not a static binary - it needs to load ld-linux.so.2

So I tried:

qemu-i386 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 /bin/ls

I get:

unknown binary format
Error -1 while loading /ld-linux.so.2

I know that qemu-i386 is working because just using ./qemu-i386 gives the help instructions. Also, if I try qemu-i386 /bin/ls, it tells me it can't find /lib/ld-linux.so.2 so I know that it's looking for the right library.

Perhaps I could try a static binary first, like a "Hello world" but I haven't had the time.

As to dosbox, qemu plus wine is much faster and can execute win32 versions of solitaire, paint etc. It would be good for trying age of empires for example. Also, qemu-i386 could run standard x86 linux applications that can't be ported (eg closed source) - again, something dosbox is incapable of doing.

Edit: I've tried to find info on "unknown binary format" - there's no documentation I can find except reference to the linuxload.c file in the qemu source. I haven't looked into the source of qemu too much, but it seems this error occurs when the first part of the binary file is not equal to 0x7f.

If there were better documentation, it might easier to work out what's going on. Otherwise, all I can think of is trial and error with different x86 ld-linux.so.2 files.

 

[trix]

I posted in the QEmu forum directing "Damion" here, hoping that some of the bad asses from this place can help him and Marovada and anyone else get this sorted, for the benefit of both the N900 community and ours!

I really wish I could do some of this notaz level awesomeness, but I suppose that's why I'm in college. One day I'll be here dedicating my life to making the Pandora awesome. This is actually the main reason I decided to attend college in the first place! Kind of a childish reason I suppose.

- trix

 

[Hooka]

Trix: Not, Whining @ other people to do all the work for you would've been childish. Pursuing education to better yourself and your favorite handheld is a more noble cause than you might think

 

[trix]

work? what work?
if this sort of thing was work, I wouldn't be working on my fourth manual Gentoo install, trying to compile XFCE (with the wrong version of GCC, I just discovered ) all night long! This is PLAY!

And yeah I'll feel noble about college when I can actually use it to do kick ass stuff in open source communities that I frequent like this one. I'm just sick of spending half my waking time in open source communities wishing I could do the meat and potatoes driver level hard stuff to help all of the higher level coders out while they make the interesting things. Instead I can only submit simple bugfixes or learn the local scripting language and make small additions that most people could have done, if they weren't busy doing the more important stuff. Or, slaughter people in Magestorm. I can do that very very well. In fact, if you ever play that game, and see a wizard named nutsack, I highly recommend running. Fast.

But, thanks for the kind words!

- trix

 

[marovada]

Success!!

I took my own advice and tried the lib and ls files from my PC ubuntu install. I've got a folder on my sd card called x86 with /lib and /bin from ubuntu.

I used:

./qemu-i386 ./lib/ld-linux.so.2 --library-path ./lib ./bin/ls

And it listed the folders in /x86

So I've used the x86 version of ls to list the folders on an arm machine and it was instant with no overclocking.

Next stop.... WINE

edit: fixed typos

 

[mali]

^ If I were SONY I'd post an animated jizz my pants .gif
But I'm not, so I just say congrats

 

[mawler]

http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html

I'd love my pandora even more if it ran that....

 

[PokeParadox]

Good luck is all I can say... although it will be nice if something usable comes from this

 

[God Ginrai]

http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html

I'd love my pandora even more if it ran that....

It's GPL, why not send an e-mail to the dev to see if he would be willing to supply the code? It would be much better to get a native port of it rather than trying to run it through Wine.

-God Ginrai

 

[urjaman]

http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html

I'd love my pandora even more if it ran that....

It's GPL (and oh i even found a source link in the page), and even if it uses the WINAPI, maybe it could be compiled against a native winelib (atleast someday) (open-source windows program, oh what a rarity ).

 

[trix]

Success!!

I took my own advice and tried the lib and ls files from my PC ubuntu install. I've got a folder on my sd card called x86 with /lib and /bin from ubuntu.

I used:

./qemu-i386 ./lib/ld-linux.so.2 --library-path ./lib ./bin/ls

And it listed the folders in /x86

So I've used the x86 version of ls to list the folders on an arm machine and it was instant with no overclocking.

Next stop.... WINE

edit: fixed typos

Kick Ass!!

Please keep us updated as to how well it works with Wine!

I looked up the minimum specs of the game I want to use this for (Magestorm) and it only requires a P60, so this might be able to do it!!

 

[Exophase]

Everyone should take the Pentium 90 claim with a little more salt:

"feels like it's running at about Pentium 90 speeds, which I'm hoping is enough for what I really want to get going."

That sounds extremely vague and error prone. Not that I'm saying it's wrong, I just don't exactly expect Pentium 90 levels with qemu at the level it's at. Still should be loads faster than DOSBox, though.

 

[trix]

That is true, and I thought the same thing. However, it can only get better, not worse.

The real question is when!

 

[Blue Ion]

This is definitely relevant to my interests, allowing Worms Armageddon to become playable (works perfectly with wine). The game only required a Pentium at 75 Mhz and since it is a strategy game, slowdowns won't hurt.
Also, would this be possible with Dosemu as well?

Only problem with Dosemu is the lack of updates it has seen, and the fact that newer linux kernels disallow mapping addresses starting from 0, but other than that it achieves full speed on the host computer thanks to the execution of the games directly on the cpu.
I don't know how qemu compares with dosbox but as long as it is faster than a 486 it should also run games such as Terminal Velocity or even Carmageddon, though that one required a Pentium at 90 Mhz (and now I remember, there where a Windows 95 version).

Dosbox will still be kept around since dosemu is on many occasions an ass with some games, sound, input but on the pc is WAY faster than dosbox.

 

[urjaman]

This is definitely relevant to my interests, allowing Worms Armageddon to become playable (works perfectly with wine). The game only required a Pentium at 75 Mhz and since it is a strategy game, slowdowns won't hurt.
Also, would this be possible with Dosemu as well?

Only problem with Dosemu is the lack of updates it has seen, and the fact that newer linux kernels disallow mapping addresses starting from 0, but other than that it achieves full speed on the host computer thanks to the execution of the games directly on the cpu.
I don't know how qemu compares with dosbox but as long as it is faster than a 486 it should also run games such as Terminal Velocity or even Carmageddon, though that one required a Pentium at 90 Mhz (and now I remember, there where a Windows 95 version).

Dosbox will still be kept around since dosemu is on many occasions an ass with some games, sound, input but on the pc is WAY faster than dosbox.

You do know that dosemu uses vm86, thus not possible on pandora (or on ARM devices in general)?...