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

Microsoft Virtual PC 7

jbarley

jbarley

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jul 1, 2006
4,023
1,896
Vancouver Island
Any use for this application these days?
Was doing a clean out and ran across a mint copy of the above.
Anyone interested send me a PM.
 
Macbookprodude said:
QEMU would be a better replacement.
Click to expand...
I have found the complete opposite to be true.

Anything I've ever tried in QEMU that was remotely close to the settings I used in VPC7 resulted in QEMU turning off like a light switch.

On occasion I check it from time to time to see if anything has improved and so far it hasn't.

VPC7 takes a crapton of RAM/CPU, but at least it runs.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dronecatcher, B S Magnet and AphoticD
eyoungren said:
VPC7 takes a crapton of RAM/CPU, but at least it runs.
Click to expand...

When running VPC7 on the PMG5 (configured with 7gb ram), there is no way that I've found to configure a VM instance with more than 512mb for that instance. This differs from, say, vmware, which takes into consideration the maximum (though still admin-adjustable) parameters a VM instance should be run within hardware environment constraints.

In plain language, it would be nice to run XP on VPC7 at, say, 1gb instead of 512mb.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AphoticD
I agree with @eyoungren , I used VPC7 with XP SP2 running on a Dual 1.8GHz G5 for many years as a web development testing "VM", back when IE was king. VPC7 never let me down, whereas any other x86 emulator on the G5 was (and still is) dog slow in comparison.

I wouldn't force my G5s to do that kind of work again though. With such a surplus of cheap Intel Macs, there is very little reason to ever need to run VirtualPC or other x86 emulators on a PowerPC Mac for anything other than tinkering and light golden-oldie gaming.

QEMU is fantastic for emulating many platforms yes, but not when the host system is a PowerPC Mac. I do however run QEMU with KVM on my G5 (16GB RAM) under Linux. I don't use it to emulate anything, but I virtualize multiple smaller Linux ppc64 (PReP) VMs for web development and everything hums along at near full speed of the host system, even when running multiple guest systems. I have found that the maximum assigned RAM is 1.75GB per guest system, so if I keep the systems light (Debian, Lubuntu, and Fedora Server), everything remains smooth and steady and the G5 is happy.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Dronecatcher and eyoungren
Again, thumbs down for QEMU under PPC OSX - I tried it years ago on my Quad and it was a world of hurt.
VPC gets a rough ride because people expect too much on last generation PPCs - in it's early versions on less powerful hardware it was quite miraculous. I was blown away with what a 300Mhz iBook could do with OS9/VPC4 and Windows 95.
 
  • Like
Reactions: eyoungren and AphoticD
Isn't VPC7 up on macintosh garden by now?

And related, I read someone almost got Vista fully working in VPC7. I think it was just the sound which he never got to work, which I suspect is because it was ISA-based and Vista depricated support for ISA.
 
reukiodo said:
Isn't VPC7 up on macintosh garden by now?

And related, I read someone almost got Vista fully working in VPC7. I think it was just the sound which he never got to work, which I suspect is because it was ISA-based and Vista depricated support for ISA.
Click to expand...
Vista?

I had Windows 7 working on it. There's a setting in the BIOS you have to make. Yes, VPC7 has BIOS.

What are you running on your PowerPC Macs?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: bobesch, dextructor, AphoticD and 1 other person
timidpimpin said:
Friends don't let friends use Windows.
Click to expand...
Hmmm…what was that?

2019-01-30 08.19.12.jpg 2019-01-30 08.31.02.jpg
[doublepost=1548862004][/doublepost]
Dronecatcher said:
I still have plenty of uses for Windows (XP) :)
Click to expand...
I have my Thinkpad using my 4K TV as a secondary display (different source channel than my Quad). I connect to the drive on my Quad that stores my movies and because of the type of display port that the Thinkpad has I get audio through the HDMI cable as well as video. Since the soundbar is connected to the TV it means I can control the volume with my remote. For my next trick, I want to look into how to control app video playback on the PC with a remote.

So essentially I am streaming video from my Quad to my TV. That lets me see all my stuff on my TV with no issues at full screen. :D
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: bobesch, AphoticD, reukiodo and 1 other person
reukiodo said:
Yes, it is weird that ACPI wasn't enabled by default in there.

How did you manage to get the sound working in Win7?
Click to expand...
I don't recall sound being an issue so I must have just checked the box in the app prefs that allowed it.
 
It seems that VPC emulates an ISA SoundBlaster and Windows 7 doesn't support ISA, so it seems that Vista is the best we can get with sound...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back