AXPbox Alpha emulator

AXPbox is a fork of the discontinued es40 emulator. It could theoretically used for running any operating system that runs on the OpenVMS or Tru64 PALcode (e.g. OpenVMS, Tru64 UNIX, Linux, NetBSD), however as of now only OpenVMS and some versions of NetBSD can be installed (for more details see Guest support).

The emulator supports SCSI, IDE, serial ports, Ethernet (using PCAP) and VGA graphics (using SDL).

OpenVMS 8.4 desktop in AXPbox. Here is a wiki page showing you how to get this CDE desktop running

Usage

First invoke the interactive configuration file generator:

axpbox configure

This creates a file named es40.cfg, which you can now modify (the generator UI doesn't allow to set all options). After the configuration file and the required ROM image are ready, you can start the emulation:

axpbox run

Please read the Installation Guide for information to get OpenVMS installed in the emulator. A guide for NetBSD is also available on the Wiki

Changes in comparison with es40

• Renamed from es40 to AXPbox to avoid confusion with the physical machine (AlphaServer ES40)
• CMake is used for compilation instead of autotools
• OpenVMS host support was dropped
• es40 and es40_cfg were merged into one executable (axpbox)
• The code was cleaned to compile without warnings on most compilers
• Code modernizing, replacing POCO framework parts by native C++ counterparts not available in 2008 (std::threads, etc)
• Incorporate various patches from other es40 forks, for example, added MC146818 periodic interrupt to allow netbsd to boot and install, skip_memtest for faster booting.
• Bug fixes, less segfaults, overall less crashes.
• More documentation and usage information on the various features and operating systems

What doesn't work (also see issues)

• Some guest operating systems (see Guest support)
• ARC
• VGA in OpenVMS
• SDL keyboard (partly works, but easily breaks)
• Multiple CPU system emulation
• Running on big endian platforms
• Some SCSI and IDE commands
• Networking for a longer time (breaks after a couple minutes)
• Copying large files between IDE CD-ROM to IDE hard drive (this usually doesn't affect OpenVMS installation)