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Microsoft Virtual PC 7
- Thread starter jbarley
- Start date
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it went to crap once M$ bought it from connectix and basically abandoned it. there are better replacements these days
B S Magnet
macrumors 603
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
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.
B S Magnet
macrumors 603
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.
AphoticD
macrumors 68020
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.
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.
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Dronecatcher
macrumors 603
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.
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.
Mac03ForLife
macrumors regular
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
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?
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Dronecatcher
macrumors 603
timidpimpin
Suspended
Dronecatcher
macrumors 603
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Hmmm…what was that?
[doublepost=1548862004][/doublepost]
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. 😀
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reukiodo
macrumors 6502
reukiodo
macrumors 6502
Yes, it is weird that ACPI wasn't enabled by default in there.
How did you manage to get the sound working in Win7?
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
I don't recall sound being an issue so I must have just checked the box in the app prefs that allowed it.