"dual-boot" OS X and Windows? info and links needed

[cb911]

hi all.

well something weird happened last night at college, my lecturer said that he was told that Mac's can dual-boot OS X and Windows?! i asked him where he heard that, and he said that he was taking to a future student who had a Mac, and he mentioed that they use 3DS Max which won't run on Mac. then the future student just said "oh, that's alright. i'll just put in a caddy and dual-boot Windows."

i was like - "no, that's not possible".

and then this morning my bro said that there is some thing where you can boot Linux and have it setup to go straight to a Windows emulator? could this be what that guy was taking about? even so, that's definitely not 'booting' Windows...

can anyone provide some info on this? any links - to even the Linux>Win boot method would be appreciated.

 

[JeDiBoYTJ]

I've read about these "PC's" that are squeezed down into a "CD-Drive" type case, and it simply slides into the second bay of your Mac, and its like a complete PC in a gadget the size of an IDE CD-ROM Drive case. I personally havn't seen one in action, but I remember a past TechTV Screen Savers episode of like 2 years ago, showing those off. Then you have a monitor, and a switcher that switches the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, between the Mac and PC. It was very interesting. I can't seem to find any more info about it.

 

[Sun Baked]

They do have a version of Windows NT for PPC that runs on the Mac -- and a current version of it that runs on a G5.

But the current version isn't a complete OS, it's just complete enough for XBox2 development.

Still need VPC or the MS client to run Window XP Pro from the Mac.

One way is slow, the other requires a physical PC.

Especially since that software is most likely a x86 binary file.

 

[Mechcozmo]

Mac processors are much different than their Windows buddies... I really don't know where that student got his info. That may work on a Windows machine but not last time I checked on a Mac...

 

[cb911]

hey JeDiBoYTJ that sounds like what this guy was talking about... but what a damn fool to say he's going to "dual-boot" Windows on his Mac.

it would be good to find some info on this...

i really hope that guy isn't hoping of running 3DS Max on VPC. poor fellow...

and i just remembered - the lecturer said that he knows of a uni around here that has a whole lab of Mac's and that they "run Windows" as well... it would have to be that PC-sized drive caddy that they're using. i'll get in touch with him and see what he says...

 

[puckhead193]

i think he ment virtual PC.......

 

[Sun Baked]

With a lot of those miniature PCs, it's probably better to buy a cheap XP Pro PC and use Remote Desktop Connection Client so you run a PC at full speed.

Instead of the slower micro-PCs or the slug like emulators.

 

[Westside guy]

and then this morning my bro said that there is some thing where you can boot Linux and have it setup to go straight to a Windows emulator? could this be what that guy was taking about? even so, that's definitely not 'booting' Windows...

On an x86 machine you can do this with VMware. I once played around with gdm (Gnome's desktop manager) and got it set up to launch a VMware session at login. At the time I was trying to figure out the best way to let my wife run Windows and still let me access my desktop Linux - but it wasn't a good solution because peripheral handling in VMware wasn't particularly transparent back then (don't know about now).

But VMware isn't going to work on PPC, and anything that might be available to emulate x86 inside of PPC Linux is going to be unusably slow.

 

[Brother Michael]

With a lot of those miniature PCs, it's probably better to buy a cheap XP Pro PC and use Remote Desktop Connection Client so you run a PC at full speed.

Instead of the slower micro-PCs or the slug like emulators.

Even that can get kinda slow. But it is fun to do. I set mine up as full screen, and left it there for awhile, a friend of mine who is a die hard PC user came in and saw and stopped dead in his tracks...looked at me and said, "How...how did you do that???"

I had a big laugh and he left a little confused. I showed him later that I was just using Remote Desktop.

Mike