rpi-kernel | Build a Linux kernel for Raspberry Pi

This isn't going to work, because the QEMU option "-M versatilepb" says "emulate a VersatilePB development board", which will not run a kernel that is intended to boot on the Pi Zero. The versatilepb board does not have devices in the places that a Pi Zero DTB file says they are, so if you provide the kernel with a Pi Zero DTB then the kernel is going to crash immediately because it can't find anything where it expects.

In general Arm devboards are not like x86 -- they are all different, and you can't just boot a kernel intended for one on a different one. This is in fact what the "unrecognized machine ID" error is telling you -- it's from the guest kernel, and it's saying "I can't boot on this board".

You need to either:

• use -M versatilepb and pass QEMU a kernel and dtb intended for that machine, not some other one
• use some other -M option and a kernel and dtb that work with it (for instance we support 'raspi2' now for a RaspberryPi 2 board model, with some notable caveats including "no USB, no networking")

Also, as you seem to have discovered, -dtb wants a DTB file (the compiled binary), not a DTS file (the source).