Subject: Re: FreeBSD emulation
To: Usuario Universo Online <danielh@uol.com.br>
From: John F. Woods <jfw@jfwhome.funhouse.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 06/20/1997 11:55:41
>	How can i emulate a Freebsd machine under Netbsd 1.2?
>	That's because i can't still access the cd-rom via Netbsd.

NetBSD doesn't "emulate a Freebsd machine" in the sense that SoftWindows
for the Macintosh emulates a Windows machine.  NetBSD emulates the system-call
interface for FreeBSD ("implement" is probably a better term than "emulate"),
which allows you to run FreeBSD binaries.

However, the emulation does not extend inside the NetBSD kernel; device
drivers which are completely different are not emulated.

I assume that you have an ATAPI CD-ROM and wish to access it with NetBSD.
NetBSD 1.2 does not have a driver for this kind of device, hence can't
offer it through the FreeBSD system call interface (or the NetBSD system
call interface, for that matter. :-)

There is a set of unofficial patches which supplies a device driver for
ATAPI CD-ROMs for NetBSD (I don't know where, someone else can volunteer
this information).  You can add these patches to your sources and rebuild
(assuming you have gotten the sources and want to do a private build),
then you can access the CD-ROM even without FreeBSD system-call emulation.
With luck, the ATAPI CD-ROM support will be in NetBSD 1.3.