[Info-vax] Are any Itanium firmware versions still legally available for free ?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2019-01-29, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
> On 2019-01-29 14:01:27 +0000, Simon Clubley said:
>
>> The objective was a full system emulator hosted under Linux, not an 
>> image level translator like Ski currently does for Linux Itanium 
>> binaries.
>
> A hypothetical emulator will usually emulate the hardware and the 
> firmware, in a fashion similar to the emulation of VAX and its control 
> store, and of Alpha and its PALcode.
>

The hardware yes, but much of the time the firmware runs on top of
the emulated hardware, at least with the emulators I am familiar with.

> AFAIK, the existing VAX and Alpha emulators do not embed that firmware.
>

At least one of the various VAX emulators in SimH includes a version
of the console firmware/ROM image.

The es40 emulator John has been talking about uses the actual SRM
and PALcode which is run on a real ES40. There are instructions in
the es40 documentation for obtaining the required firmware and making
it available to the emulator.

For something as complex as the Itanium firmware I don't see any
way around running a copy of the Itanium firmware on top of the
emulated hardware but there doesn't seem to be any legal way to
do that any more unlike with the VAX and Alpha emulators.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world