What's the status quo with OSX86 10.5?

[Alpha Sirius]

I'm not a newbie, at now I'm Developing my new Sirius OS "KFreeBSD + Glibc + GNUstep".

But that is not the matter I'm here to talk about Leopard porting to the open x86 plataform "Bios Based PC", so I would like to ask anyone if is there someone working on it?

I never use Leopard but I think Apple has worked alot in the integration of the System with the Firmware Interface "EFI" and working around VT on Intel Core Duo and they may have integrade some functions of Device Drivers on the EFI (See EFI Arch) to make dificult to port the system.

 

So there is some steps that we may work for the porting:

1. Create an ACPI Plataform Driver may not be the only thing to do, as the system is hard coded with EFI. We must supplie a EFI Code inside the Kernel "Like a Emulator" to the system think that it's running on EFI or put it on a bootstrap to load EoB (EFI over BIOS) before the Kernel.

 

2. Create a Virtual VirTualization Instruction set like we did with SSE3 over SSE2, it may be based on the VMware Idea.

 

if Somebody has any idea to help porting just post then all.

 

My Sugestion is to work hard on a bootstrap to Create a fake Macintosh Platform Env

[gwprod12]

The way I understand it, SSE3 calls were mapped to existing SSE2 functions.

 

I think there's more to what you're suggesting than you think.

[Alpha Sirius]

I know how SSE2 Patch works but if map the cpu time sharing for more than one system like VMware does. you can have a second system running on it. We don't need full system virtualization because Leopard has a VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor).

And the EFI bootstrap is something like Some Hackers did with Bios over Efi before BootCamp. if BoE is possible why EoB isn't?

 

If we can't port EFI to the PC as a Bootstrap, we can add support for EFI calls on a Kernel Extension or Remove the EFI Platform driver and Resolve the Symbols that others need on it, like we did with TPM, just adding simple calls to a ACPI similar call and all others unresolvable EFI calls to a build-in EFI, like SSE2 -> SSE3.

 

Thanks.

I've found a EoB its named MacEfix86 does someone knows about it?

Edited August 23, 2006 by Alpha Sirius

[Alpha Sirius]

MacEfix86 for me Doesn't work. Running under QEMU my X11 got broke and me system didn't stop to make noise. (FreeBSD)

[gwprod12]

There are several reasons why this isnt "easy".

 

First of all. EFI isnt very well documented. Even though Apple claims it is an industry standard, by logic alone, we could counter that unless Apple is the industry in question, it's not true. Almost no one in the personal computer "industry" uses EFI. EFI is also not to be in Vista (it's being taken out for release). Which means a few more years of BIOS at the very least.

 

Second of all. While it's technically possible (if you knew how) to write a Bootcamp-style compatibility layer for EFI, it runs into several other problems, such as driver support requiring Apple's undocumented EFI specification.

 

Not an easy task without knowing what OS X is actually trying to do.