Is there an IRC channel I can hang out in for this project?
There hasn't been much conversation on the #qemu irc.oftc.net channel about the advent calendar, but that's the channel.
For the most part I send out an email to the QEMU mailing list before December and folks have been emailing me images: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2014-10/msg025...
Gerd, who put together the image, had to find the right emulated hardware that the old kernel knows how to talk to. It doesn't know about PCI devices (!!) so only ISA devices will work :).