Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

grneyedjay

macrumors member
Original poster
May 19, 2004
34
0
Attached is a screenshot of my Wintel emulating Mac OS X via PearPC http://pearpc.sourceforge.net. It runs decently well, but operates slowly (as you might imagine).

I had to create a disk image and install Darwin so it would work (the disk utility in OS Setup doesn't work in this case), and then I could install OS X (Panther, no doubt!) from disk iso images made from the original cds.

I wonder how this compares to Virtual PC, although I'm sure it's not near as integrated as VPC is...well, actually PearPC isn't integrated at all without some tweaking. But it is no where near usable for productivity, however, if I created some small removable disk images, I could get data to and from my PC.

I'm quite impressed though due to the difficulty in emulating the PowerPC processor...I remember the days of Basilisk II and Softmac...(they had such great claims at coming very close to emulating PowerPC processor, yet now their site is no longer in existenc)

I also noticed some bugs in the OS GUI...for instance, if you will notice there is no shadow behind the 'Macintosh HD' text in the screenshot...

Another good resource for mac emulation is http://www.emaculation.com.

NOW, all I need to do is install iLife!
 

Attachments

  • screenshot.jpg
    screenshot.jpg
    97.8 KB · Views: 217

dopefiend

macrumors 6502
May 6, 2004
425
0
I cant wait til they get up to making it really usable. :cool: Mac on a good ole x86 will be nice :p
 

blue&whiteman

macrumors 65816
Nov 30, 2003
1,210
0
dopefiend said:
What the hell? Explain how I am a troller...

you always hint at being anti-mac. ALWAYS. doing so on a pc forum people would cheer and agree with you but here on a mac forum saying these things is trolling.
 

dopefiend

macrumors 6502
May 6, 2004
425
0
blue&whiteman said:
you always hint at being anti-mac.

I don't see how I can hint at being anti-mac...

I enjoy them both and sometimes actually add a bit when PCs come up.

There are some things I don't like about Macs, there are some things I don't like about PCs and making these things present sometimes in a post makes me a troll? I think not.

But then again, this "troll" comment is coming from a person that wishes people to hell if they drive an SUVs... ;)


Anyways, like most emulators (which there are good ones out there! suprize :rolleyes: ) this one will mature and eventually be usable.
 

blue&whiteman

macrumors 65816
Nov 30, 2003
1,210
0
dopefiend said:
But then again, this "troll" comment is coming from a person that wishes people to hell if they drive an SUVs... ;)

at least that is something valid to have a problem with..

I can't speak for you but when greedy selfish people kill the earth that much faster because they want an SUV I have a problem with that.
 

michaelrjohnson

macrumors 68020
Aug 9, 2000
2,180
5
53132
okay you two, take that outside.

back on track... I know they had discussed how slow the emulation was, but could you give some real-world applications of said slowness? For example, how long does it take to open apps like Safari or AddressBook?

Thanks for the info in advance!
 

Flowbee

macrumors 68030
Dec 27, 2002
2,943
0
Alameda, CA
dopefiend said:
Its a matter of time my friend ;)

Seems to me that Apple has an interest in making their OS as difficult to emulate as possible. They want to sell hardware. As emulation makes advances, Apple will work to thwart those advances. Sure, at some point in the future you may be emulate an 'old' version of OS X reasonably well, but I think Apple will do everything in its power to make sure you can't emulate the current version at useable speeds.

Contrast this with Microsoft, who, as a software company (primarily), have an interest in making sure their OS is emulated well on Macs. They would like Windows to be installed on every Mac on the planet.
 

MisterMe

macrumors G4
Jul 17, 2002
10,709
69
USA
Flowbee said:
Seems to me that Apple has an interest in making their OS as difficult to emulate as possible. They want to sell hardware. As emulation makes advances, Apple will work to thwart those advances. Sure, at some point in the future you may be emulate an 'old' version of OS X reasonably well, but I think Apple will do everything in its power to make sure you can't emulate the current version at useable speeds.

Contrast this with Microsoft, who, as a software company (primarily), have an interest in making sure their OS is emulated well on Macs. They would like Windows to be installed on every Mac on the planet.
Mac hardware is built to published standards. PearPC would not be possible otherwise. What PearPC emulates is not so much a Mac as it emulates a PPC-based personal computer. It is primarily used to run PPC-based Linux on Intel hardware. The difficulty is emulating the PPC on the x86, not running MacOS X on an emulated PPC. (It's illegal, but that's another matter.) The difficulty has nothing to do with Apple. It's due largely to the register mismatch between the two processor architectures. Intel-on-PPC emulation is relatively easy and efficient because the PPC is register-rich. The PPC ISA is also friendly to emulation. The latter is why Apple chose the PPC over Motorola's 88000 RISC processor to replace the 680x0. (Before it dropped its hardware business, NeXT had chosen the 88000.) PPC-on-Intel emulation is relatively hard and inefficient because the x86 is register-poor. The x86 must use memory to store some of the data that the PPC holds in registers. This simple fact alone dramatically reduces the speed of PPC-on-Intel emulation. Add to that, the x86 ISA was developed when emulation was simply not a consideration. Finally, as with all emulation, PPC-on-Intel emulators are runtime compilers or interpreters, which take another significant performance hit. When all of these are put together, PPC-to-Intel emulation will never be better than an order of magnitude slower than a real PPC processsor. No amount of compilation, optimization, incantation, or wishful thinking is going to change that.
 

realityisterror

macrumors 65816
Aug 30, 2003
1,354
1
Snellville, GA
i'm surprised apple hasn't put a stop to this yet... i'd be interested in trying it, but i don't think my xp box is stable enough to get through the whole installation... (and before you say it's my fault that it isn't stable, i never use it... it's my parent's/sister's and i'm going to reinstall windows after we get back from vacation.)

reality
 

dopefiend

macrumors 6502
May 6, 2004
425
0
MisterMe said:
No amount of compilation, optimization, incantation, or wishful thinking is going to change that.

But at some point in time, is it possible to get VPC performance considering all that you said havingto be done?
 

jxyama

macrumors 68040
Apr 3, 2003
3,735
1
dopefiend said:
But at some point in time, is it possible to get VPC performance considering all that you said havingto be done?

even if this works as well as VPCs do on Macs, i don't see the point. it's more of proof of concept or novelty item. there aren't any killer apps that are absolutely necessary available only on a Mac - VPCs are there to run windows programs that are absolute musts.

if you want to run, say, iLife, then it'll always be far cheaper and more robust to get a Mac rather than getting iLife software ($50), panther ($129) and an XP box that's sufficiently powerful enough to make emulation not so painful. PCs may generally be more powerful than Macs but they aren't so powerful that dirt cheap $400 boxes would be able to emulate OS X better than even, say, the low end eMac ($800) running it natively.
 

MisterMe

macrumors G4
Jul 17, 2002
10,709
69
USA
dopefiend said:
But at some point in time, is it possible to get VPC performance considering all that you said havingto be done?
Absolutely not. My previous post can be summarized simply:

x86-on-PPC emulation: "easy" and efficient

PPC-on-x86 emulation: difficut and inefficient

Emulating the x86 on a RISC processor--not just the PPC--has definite benefits. Microway sells Alpha-based scientific workstations. They used to include an x86 emulator that was advertised at 70% of the speed of a hardware processor at the same clock speed. Microsoft Windows NT on non-x86 processors included SoftWindows to run x86-binary applications. On the Alpha box that I played with, I never saw a performance drop compared to an Intel-based box.

I know of no example of emulating a RISC processor on the x86 in a production environment. The people over at Emulators, Inc. tried mightily to develop a PPC-on-Intel emulator. However, they gave up in disgust. PearPC is to be commended for its effort so far. Even though the emulation engine is incomplete, the results are remarkable so well. However, it reminds me very much of the dog who recited the Gettysburg Address in perfect English. The miracle was not that the dog spoke so well, but that it spoke at all. As jxyama said, PearPC is really more of a novelty or at best a proof of concept. It will never rise to the level of a useful piece of software.
 

pinto32

macrumors 6502
Oct 19, 2003
361
0
PA
This is slightly off-topic, but the thought is inspired by this discussion....

I think it would be a great idea for Apple to release a crippled (and un-crackable) demo of OS X for x86. Seriously, we all know that the main reason more people dont switch is because they are ignorant of the benefits of OS X, so what better way to recruit switchers than to give them an easily accessable and FREE taste of the Macintosh experiance...



..oh, and SUVs and thier owners deserve to burn...
 

7on

macrumors 601
Nov 9, 2003
4,939
0
Dress Rosa
Yeah, this seems that it won't get much use. The only "need to have" apps on OSX that aren't available for Windows are the intensive apps such as FCP, GarageBand, ect.

VPC is on it's 6th revision and you all know how slow it is. VPC also survived because it is a commercial app. Open-source is good and all when you can work on it in your free time, but something as intense as PPC-on-x86 requires full time attention and a team of developers. In not, they'll get decent OSX speeds when Apple releases their G8 with OS14.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.