Veneer.exe

From Computers Wiki
Revision as of 06:55, 6 February 2024 by Huntertur (talk | contribs) (Expand error information)
Jump to navigationJump to search

VENEER.EXE is a Microsoft COFF executable used to start the boot sequence for Windows NT on PowerPC.

Description

VENEER.EXE is an ARC firmware implementation that runs on an existing Open Firmware environment.[1]

Notes

  • It treats IDE devices as SCSI devices.[2]
  • It only recognizes 601, 603, 603e, 604, and 604e CPUs.[3]
  • It appears to be present in the Windows NT source tree. Version 3.0 has strings referring to files in D:\nt\private\ntos\boot\veneer\, and Version 3.03 has S:\BUILDS\NT400\1345.960918\SRC\DAYTONA\MOT\VENEER\.
  • Version 1.0 complains about multi, whereas Version 3.0 and 3.03 do not. Version 1.0 will print: GetDeviceAttribute: node multi(1) not PeripheralClass.
  • Tested in Version 3.03, if a given node in the path is not PeripheralClass, a dump_code diagram of the node, its parent, its children, and its peers will be printed to the screen, along with the name, class, type, and key of the offending node.

Versions

  • Open Firmware ARC Interface Version 3.03 (Sep 19 1996 - 02:29:26), 128512 bytes[4]
  • Open Firmware ARC Interface Version 3.0 (Jul 12 1996 - 18:46:28), 161792 bytes[5][6]
  • Open Firmware ARC Interface Version 1.0 (May 10 1995 - 19:01:10), 83968 bytes[7]

Error messages

The following boot-time error messages have been seen so far:

  • Can't open disk label package: File system not supported
  • Couldn't read entire file header: got 0: File is empty
  • VrOpen returned 8: File not found
  • VrOpen returned d: Disk not found
  • Wrong machine type: 4947: File not a valid COFF PowerPC executable

References

  1. ↑ https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=864612#p864612
  2. ↑ https://github.com/openbios/openfirmware/blob/d5cc657ce81c0f7d1857b4687766b64d75a4145d/ofw/gui/findos.fth#L37
  3. ↑ https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-ppc/2017-07/msg00581.html
  4. ↑ Motorola Net6200/166 \OS\VENEER.EXE
  5. ↑ Motorola Net6200/166 \OS\WINNT40\VENEER.EXE
  6. ↑ Windows NT 4.0 Workstation retail CD-ROM \PPC\VENEER.EXE
  7. ↑ Windows NT 3.51 Workstation retail CD-ROM \PPC\VENEER.EXE
Retrieved from "https://computers.huntertur.net/index.php?title=Veneer.exe&oldid=910"