FAQ: Using the emulator

Q: Should I use the default 8Mb of memory with my emulated sun3?
A: No!  Use 32Mb of memory for ultimate emulation performance.  You definitely don't want the Sun3 swapping - its a major slowdown, just like on a real Sun3.  Selecting more than 32Mb still only gives you 32Mb.  Word on the street is, though, that this limit may not be a limitation of the Carrera ROM and we might be able to create a Franken-TME with more than 32Mb.  Please work on this issue, modify TME, and create an emulated Sun3 with 1Gb of main memory.  Then send me a patch.  Yeah!

Q: What type of disk should I emulate in the emulator?
A: Peter's suggestion of a 1GB drive selection is a good one, as well as not using a sparse file.

Q: When creating an emulated SCSI drive, should I actually format it inside the emulator, or just label it and move on?
A: Just label it.  Formatting is not necessary, and causes TME to crash.

Q: What is the key-sequence for STOP-A?
A: (simultaneously) right-CTRL F1 A

Q: I enter right-CTRL F1 A but the emulator doesn't take me to the prom monitor.
A: Its not a question, but it is a problem.  It doesn't work on some systems.  One Dell of mine works, one doesn't.  All I can suggest is to generate two eeprom.bin files, one with a boot device of sd, and one with a boot device of st, and switch between the two as necessary.  After installing NetBSD or SunOS in the emulator you'll likely never need to boot from tape or enter STOP-A again.

Q: After I run NetBSD inside the emulator then shutdown and get returned to the prom monitor prompt, I can enter "b sd" or such and everything works fine.  But after I run SunOS in the emulator then shutting down and get returned to the prom monitor prompt, I can't enter anything at the keyboard.  What's going on?
A: I don't know.  Its a bummer, isn't it.  Just enter ctrl-c at the tmesh prompt then restart the emulator.


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