Following the instructions found at these articles, I build a .deb package for Qemu which is suitable for the RDC processor which is used by Bifferboard. The instructions and patches can be found at the official Qemu Wiki page of Bifferboard.

There is nothing special I’ve done here, just packaged the qemu binary, so that you can easily try the “qemu-rdc” binary. The download link follows:

• qemu-rdc_0.10.5-1_i386.deb (595K)

Here are some simple instructions on how to test your own “bzImage” kernel build:

#
# Installation instructions for the .deb package and for the Qemu setup
#
famzah@FURNA:~$ wget http://www.famzah.net/download/bifferboard/qemu-rdc_0.10.5-1_i386.deb
famzah@FURNA:~$ sudo dpkg -i qemu-rdc_0.10.5-1_i386.deb
famzah@FURNA:~$ mkdir test-kernel
famzah@FURNA:~$ cd test-kernel/
famzah@FURNA:~/test-kernel$ svn co https://bifferboard.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/bifferboard/qemu/
famzah@FURNA:~/test-kernel$ cd qemu/run
famzah@FURNA:~/test-kernel/qemu/run$ vi run-qemu.sh # at the last line, change "qemu" with "qemu-rdc"

#
# You can now test your kernel/rootfs build. For example:
#
famzah@FURNA:~/test-kernel/qemu/run$ cp /home/famzah/biffer/qemu/custom_bzImage ./bzImage
famzah@FURNA:~/test-kernel/qemu/run$ QEMU_BIN=qemu-rdc ./run-qemu.sh

If you want to attach a USB mass-storage device and try your rootfs build there, please follow the instructions at the official Qemu Wiki page of Bifferboard on which parameters to add to “qemu-rdc” in “run-qemu.sh”.

You can exit the emulator by pressing CTRL+a and “x”. You will get some help info by pressing CTRL+a and “?”. See the man or documentation pages of “qemu” for more information.

In a few days I’ll post an article and a .deb package for a kernel 2.6.30.5 build with (almost) all possible modules, suitable for running a native i386 Debian rootfs installation on Bifferboard.

P.S. Today I got my serial USB RS232 @ 3.3V cable and can now start with some real tests 😀