CS 354 - Running XINU on UTM

Thanks to Kian Kasad (@kdkasad) for contributing the steps and testing data to get XINU running on a UTM virtual machine on Apple Silicon Macs! You can check out his website here.

Steps

First follow the steps at the XINU for VirtualBox page to get your own xinu.iso image. Then follow the steps below:

  1. In UTM, select “File > New”.
  2. Select “Emulate”.
  3. Select “Other”.
  4. Select “Browse” and select xinu.iso.
  5. Select “Continue”.
  6. Select i386 (x86) architecture.
  7. Change memory amount to 256 MiB.
  8. Change CPU core count to 1.
  9. Select “Continue”.
  10. Set drive size to 1 GiB. Unfortunately we cannot skip creating a drive, but we will remove it later.
  11. Select “Continue”.
  12. Continue past “Shared Directory” page.
  13. Name the VM whatever you want.
  14. Select “Open VM Settings”.
  15. Save.
  16. In the sidebar’s “Drives” section, select the “IDE Drive” which is not associated with xinu.iso. Press “Delete” and confirm.
  17. In the sidebar’s “Devices” section, select “New…” then “Serial”.
  18. In the sidebar, select “QEMU”.
  19. Disable the “UEFI boot” option.
  20. Save the VM’s settings.

You should now be ready to boot!