NAME

       pearpc  -  architecture  independent  PowerPC  platform  emulator  capable of running most
       PowerPC operating systems.

SYNOPSIS

       ppc configfile

DESCRIPTION

       PearPC (ppc) is an architecture independent PowerPC platform emulator capable  of  running
       most PowerPC operating systems.

       Features
           * License: GPL
           * Programming language: C++, C and (on x86 platforms) assembler
           * Supported platforms: POSIX-X11 (Linux, ...), Win32

       The following operating systems were tested and run (to some extend) under PearPC:
           * Mandrake Linux 9.1 for PPC: Runs very well
           * Darwin for PPC: Runs well
           * Mac OS X 10.3: Runs well with some caveats
           * OpenBSD for PPC: Crashes while booting (accesses PCI in an unsupported way)
           * NetBSD for PPC: Crashes while booting

       PearPC simulates the following hardware:
           *  CPU:  Sort  of  G3,  no  altivec  yet. Includes a minimalistic debugger. The CPU is
       completely deterministic, optimal for OS-development.
           * CPU JITC-X86: A very fast CPU for x86  systems  that  translates  the  PowerPC  code
       on-the-fly to native code. Still a little bit experimental.
           * PCI-Brige: A barebone PCI-Bridge, enough to work with.
           *   IDE-Controller:  Sort  of  CMD646  with  bus-mastering  support.  You  can  attach
       IDE-Harddisk(s) and/or IDE-CDROM(s) (represented through files or devices on the host).
           * PIC: A programmable interrupt controller (sort of Heathrow).
           * VIA-Cuda: With attached Mouse and Keyboard.
           * Network Controller: Emulates a 3COM  3C90x,  works  currently  only  on  POSIX  with
       /dev/tun support.
           * NVRAM: Capable of storing 8KiB non-volatile memory.
           * USB: A non-usable USB-hub, but enough to make the OS think that there is an USB-hub.
           *  PROM: Sort of openfirmware. Ugly and contains a lot of hacks, but enough to support
       Yaboot and BootX and to boot from HFS/HFS+ partitions.

CONFIG FILE

       See ppcconf.example for commented configuration file in docs/example directory

       See also online ppc documentation on the website URLed above.

LIMITATIONS

       Due to the nature of emulation, PearPC is quite slow (the client will run about 500  times
       slower  than  the  host).  Note  that only the CPU is that slow, the speed of the emulated
       hardware doesn't suffer that  much  from  the  emulation;  e.g.  the  speed  of  simulated
       harddrive/CDROM  is  quite  good,  especially  when  using  the  busmaster interface. This
       situation is better if you can use the JITC (about 40 times slower) but  still  not  ready
       for productive use.

       Because  the author has only access to little endian machine, PearPC will most likely only
       run on little endian architectures due to  some  stupid  assumptions  in  the  code.  This
       shouldn't  be hard to fix, the author would fix this himself if he had big endian hardware
       (Hint: You should donate big endian hardware to the author if you want this to be fixed!)

       Because of some equally stupid reasons PearPC will only run on 32-bit architectures.  Yes,
       this also shouldn't be hard to fix.

       A lot of unimplementated features are currently critical (i.e. will abort PearPC).

       Timings are very unaccurate. This will be fixed in later versions.

       No idle sleep (PearPC will consume cpu resources although the client is idle).

       PearPC lacks a save/restore emulator-state feature.

       No Altivec support but planned.

       No  LBA48, so no support for harddisks greater than 128 GiB. But I'd be really suprised if
       PearPC  correctly  supported  harddisks  greater  than  4  GiB,   although   that   should
       theoretically be possible.

AUTHORS

       Main  developer:  Sebastian Biallas <sb@biallas.net> Some major parts by: Stefan Weyergraf
       <sw@weyergraf.de>

WEBSITE

       Visit PearPC website at http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

                                               0.1                                      PEARPC(1)