Emulators to test non-x86 FreeBSD ports?

[C. P. Ghost]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 7:56 PM, David Brodbeck <gull at gull.us> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 9:27 AM, C. P. Ghost <cpghost at cordula.ws> wrote:
>> Hello list,
>>
>> are there any emulators out there that can run the non-x86 versions of FreeBSD
>> on a FreeBSD/i386 or FreeBSD/amd64 host?
>>
>> I'm especially interested in trying FreeBSD/sparc64 port, but I'd also like to
>> test the FreeBSD/powerpc and the FreeBSD/arm ports on an emulator, before
>> seeking real hardware.
>
> QEMU claims PowerPC and ARM emulation support, but I don't know if
> it's good enough to run FreeBSD.  PearPC is another PowerPC emulator,
> but it was mainly targeted at running MacOS and the project appears to
> have been stagnant since 2005.

I'll check it out, thanks.

> It depends a bit on what you're trying to determine.  If you're
> looking to test stability or performance, the results you get from an
> emulator are unlikely to have any real comparison to what you get on
> real hardware.

Basically, I'm interested in assembly language programming on those
platforms. So if they ran in an emulator, that would be ideal, but I wouldn't
mind a couple of real hardware boxes if there's no software alternative.

BTW, have you guys any experience with emulators/gxemul? It doesn't
cover sparc but claims to implement a complete arm and powerpc
machine, at least for the corresponding netbsd ports.

Thanks,
-cpghost.

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