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)