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a powermac that ran win 95 and mac os??

question fear

question fear

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 10, 2003
2,277
84
The "Garden" state
I was in a local used computer shop today, and i noticed they had a powermac listed there and the note said "get the best of both worlds, runs win 95 and mac os!"
how is this possible? is it a virtual pc thing or was there once a version of win 95 for ppc? I am confused and curious, but the woman in the store seemed pretty computer illiterate for a store owner (i think her husband/business partner knew more, she was just the sales person), so i didnt really want to get involved in quizzing her on it.
-carly
 
Am I crazy, or do I remember a Mac that had like 2 motherboards in it, and you could switch back and forth between PC and Mac?

Lee Tom
 
OrangeMicro used to make PC boards that ran inside the Mac, allowing you to run Windows (non-emulated) or any other PC OS.

I vaguely recall Apple actually selling a Mac that did this (essentially, one that had an OrangeMicro or similar card built-in), but that might just be a phantom memory.
 
This line of conversation has reminded me how desperate Apple used to be. "Please buy our systems. Please. We'll even let you run a competing OS on them. I mean, we'll provide competing hardware to run that competing OS as well. Please, just give the Mac a try."

Thank God we have OS X now. Probably even less market share. ;) But at least Apple isn't doing stuff like this anymore.

That said, it was a pretty cool idea. If I could buy a relatively cheap PC PCI card and use it in my G5, I just might....
 
It wasn't a PowerMac, but I seem to remember the machine itself being known as the "Quadra 610 DOS Compatible". You literally hit a keyboard command (I think it was Command-Tab, weirdly enough), and DOS came up. It had some card built in, like others have said.
 
There were several models that Apple shiped that included X86 compatability cards. Quadra 610, 630, Performa and LC equivalents had an Intel 486SX or 486DXII option @25-66Mhz respectively that could be plugged into the PDS slot. Some machines shipped so equipped or could could be added later. The PowerMac 4400 also had a PC Compatbile version that shipped with a Cyrix 166Mhz 686 proccessor. Other models that had PC compatbility options were the Power Mac 6100 and 7200 series whiche were equiped with 100Mhz Pentium cards. In addition to that Apple sold an add on aftermarket card of the 166Mhz Pentium that could be added into any PCI Power Macintosh. Orange Micro also sold aftermarket Cards.

To bad they did'nt keep it up. I think PC compatbility cards could still sell had they kept up with the upgrage Cards.
 
Little Endian said:
There were several models that Apple shiped that included X86 compatability cards. Quadra 610, 630, Performa and LC equivalents had an Intel 486SX or 486DXII option @25-66Mhz respectively that could be plugged into the PDS slot. Some machines shipped so equipped or could could be added later. The PowerMac 4400 also had a PC Compatbile version that shipped with a Cyrix 166Mhz 686 proccessor. Other models that had PC compatbility options were the Power Mac 6100 and 7200 series whiche were equiped with 100Mhz Pentium cards. In addition to that Apple sold an add on aftermarket card of the 166Mhz Pentium that could be added into any PCI Power Macintosh. Orange Micro also sold aftermarket Cards.
Click to expand...

The 6100 "DOS Compatible" had the 66mhz 486DX2, not a Pentium. I think you're right about the 7200 though.
 
Back in the day, there was an aftermarket PC-on-a-card that ran in Commodore Amigas (the larger ones, with Zorro slots). There was also an aftermarket Mac-compatible card (you had to populate it with ROM chips from a real Mac before it would work). One of the wierdest things I ever saw was some guy running OS/2 and MacOS 8.x (7.x?) simultaneously in windows on his Amiga Workbench desktop.

I checked out one of the early Power Macs that had the PC Compatibility Card installed, because I was interested in both platforms at that time. I wasn't impressed with the performance; running all the I/O through emulation on the Mac system seemed to slow down the PC card. I concluded that the best thing was to buy a Mac and use it as a Mac, and buy a PC and use it as a PC. The cost was about the same.


Crikey
 
I have virtual pc 2.1 with windows 95 on a 9.2 partition. It was the cheapest way I could get to run Office 2000 on my PB, and it works pretty fast too.
 
I still have both a DOS compatibility card for a PM 6100 and the newer Pentuim 166mhz.

The Pentuim 166 is made by apple, it features a Pentium 166mhz NON mmx, with 256k L2 Cache and 16 mb built in ram.
It also has a 5v 168 PIN ram expansion slot, built in Ati Mach64 mb video with 2mb and Soundblaster 16 output..

MIne has 32 mb extra memory (brings it up to 48 mb) and it ram Window 95 very well back in the days! I think its back in 1997 i used it and then it was great. It would probably also run win 98 decent too.

Mac OS 7.5.3 came bundeled with it, not sure if its compatible with OS8 and 9.

Here's a pic:
pccard.jpg


-tb
 
SpaceMagic said:
Billyboy... why dont you just buy Office for the Mac?
Click to expand...

Because I have the windows office software and a copy of vpc for dinosaurs, but I dont have £116 for the Mac software. It seems the most cost effective way for me right now to open the occasional doc document that OpenOffice wont do correctly.
 
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