Anybody running Virtual PC on iBook G4?

[filmbuff]

I’m looking to run a couple old Windows programs in Windows 2k or XP without buying a windows laptop. I see I can get Microsoft Virtual PC 7.0 on Macintosh Garden. How does it work? Reasonable support? CD/DVD drive support? My iBook is the 1.33ghz with 1.5GB RAM.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I’m looking to run a couple old Windows programs in Windows 2k or XP without buying a windows laptop. I see I can get Microsoft Virtual PC 7.0 on Macintosh Garden. How does it work? Reasonable support? CD/DVD drive support? My iBook is the 1.33ghz with 1.5GB RAM.

XP is too much of a stretch even if you use a lite version - Windows 2000 sits better. Performance wise it'll feel like a 300ish Mhz Pentium, once 2000 is installed, run every optimisation going, especially turning off non-essential services.
You can see it running in my video:

 

[bobesch]

It's a pity that the iBooks G4 cannot boot into native os9 to run VPC3/Win2K. (VPC2/Win2k even works on my 1st-gen 300MHz Clamshell iBookG3 but the slick VPC versions for os9 do not run in the Classic-environment.)
As @Dronecatcher said "WinXP is too much of a stretch..."
Win2K may be fine depending of the version of your iBook and RAM-size. On my 1.65GHz 15" PowerBookG4 /w 2GB RAM I run VPC7 with Win2k on a regular base (booting Office2000 is faster than Office'04 in Tiger) but also occasionally with a shrinked down "WinXPFundamentals"(=SP2) just because of the v.6.x RDP-Client in order to get access to my Win2008Server.

 

[DearthnVader]

It's a pity that the iBooks G4 cannot boot into native os9 to run VPC3/Win2K. (VPC2/Win2k even works on my 1st-gen 300MHz Clamshell iBookG3 but the slick VPC versions for os9 do not run in the Classic-environment.)
As @Dronecatcher said "WinXP is too much of a stretch..."
Win2K may be fine depending of the version of your iBook and RAM-size. On my 1.65GHz 15" PowerBookG4 /w 2GB RAM I run VPC7 with Win2k on a regular base (booting Office2000 is faster than Office'04 in Tiger) but also occasionally with a shrinked down "WinXPFundamentals"(=SP2) just because of the v.6.x RDP-Client in order to get access to my Win2008Server.

The iBook G4 can run OS 9 natively.

 

[Dronecatcher]

The iBook G4 can run OS 9 natively.

How so? Do you mean with a hacked install disk from Mac OS9Lives...and doesn't that have various restrictions?

 

[filmbuff]

I decided to go with Windows 98 running in Virtual PC 7. It actually works great and much faster than I expected. I have 2 games from the 90s that are surprisingly graphics heavy and they ran with no issue. I assigned 484MB of RAM and 8MB of VRAM which is 1/4 of what the iBook has available. I’m sure I could run Win2k and some newer programs if I wanted.

My plan B was to buy a 90s Windows laptop but running this on the iBook is actually far superior hardware-wise.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I have 2 games from the 90s that are surprisingly graphics heavy and they ran with no issue.

What games are you playing?

 

[filmbuff]

What games are you playing?

MSFS 98 and a live action strategy game called Silent Steel. More to come.

 

[DearthnVader]

How so? Do you mean with a hacked install disk from Mac OS9Lives...and doesn't that have various restrictions?

Depends on the iBook, the 6,5 runs pretty great

 

[Dronecatcher]

Depends on the iBook, the 6,5 runs pretty great

Full graphics and audio support?

 

[DearthnVader]

Full graphics and audio support?

Well, the Mic doesn't work.......

It's not really full support, but I hacked together graphics drivers for the Radeon 9200 Mobility. No support for sleep, or Airport Extreme, but it runs OS 9 natively.

VirtualPC runs a little better under OS 9 in some cases, as processes can hog the CPU time better than under OS X. I forget the last version that runs under OS 9. The drawbacks, if the app hangs or crashes you'll need to reboot, not so under OS X.

Also, v7 of Virtual PC doesn't have support for little endian, as it will run on the G5, and the G5 lacks mixed endian support.

We are vitalizing a little endian CPU, so it only stands to reason that it's going to be faster with mixed endian support.

In this case, if v7 is running the apps the OP wants to run, and a little more speed isn't really going to help, there is no reason not to just continue to use it under OS X, I just wanted to point out that OS 9 will run native.

I also have the iBook G4 with the Radeon 9550 running OS 9, tho it lacks Graphics Acceleration and sound, I'm sure it will run Virtual PC just fine.