QEMU UAE PPC Plugin

QEMU-UAE PPC Plugin

Amiberry can use an external qemu-uae plugin for PowerPC accelerator emulation. The plugin provides the QEMU-based PPC CPU implementation, while Amiberry keeps the emulator configuration, board selection, plugin loading, and packaging logic.

Supported platforms

Dynamic QEMU-UAE PPC plugin loading is for desktop builds:

• Linux and FreeBSD: qemu-uae.so
• macOS: qemu-uae.dylib
• Windows: qemu-uae.dll

Android and iOS currently build with QEMU-UAE PPC plugin support disabled.

Requirements

• Amiberry built with USE_PPC=ON and USE_QEMU_PPC=ON
• A compatible qemu-uae plugin in the configured plugins directory
• CyberStorm PPC or Blizzard PPC ROMs
• A PPC-capable AmigaOS setup

Amiberry currently requires qemu-uae API 3.8 or newer. The major API version must match exactly.

Plugin placement

Put the plugin in Amiberry's normal plugins directory:

• Linux: the configured plugins_dir, AMIBERRY_PLUGINS_DIR, the installed libdir, $HOME/Amiberry/plugins, or the executable plugins directory depending on your layout
• macOS: Amiberry.app/Contents/Resources/plugins/
• Windows: the plugins folder next to Amiberry.exe

See Amiberry Directories for the full plugin directory lookup rules.

Building Amiberry with plugin support

Source builds do not download or build QEMU automatically. Build or obtain the plugin separately, then place it in the plugins directory or pass it to CMake so it is bundled into the install/package layout:

cmake -B build -DUSE_PPC=ON -DUSE_QEMU_PPC=ON
cmake -B build -DUSE_PPC=ON -DUSE_QEMU_PPC=ON -DQEMU_UAE_PLUGIN=/path/to/qemu-uae.so

QEMU_UAE_PLUGIN must point to an existing plugin artifact, and CMake requires both USE_PPC=ON and USE_QEMU_PPC=ON when this option is used.

Using it

1. Start Amiberry with --log.
2. Select a CyberStorm PPC or Blizzard PPC accelerator board.
3. Enable PPC CPU emulation in the CPU panel.
4. Leave PPC implementation on Automatic, or select QEMU explicitly.
5. Boot the PPC-capable system.
6. Confirm the log reports the QEMU implementation instead of the dummy fallback.

If the plugin is missing, too old, or missing required symbols, Amiberry logs the plugin error and falls back cleanly to another available PPC implementation or the dummy implementation.