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hvfsl

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 9, 2001
1,872
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London, UK
According to http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=6829 a new x86 emulator has been made for the Mac that will run on G5s. It is basically a modified and enhanced version of the open source emulator Bochs. It is not as fast as VPC6 on a G4, but at least it provides the option for G5 users to run windows programs on their Macs. The program costs around $30.
 
Stand Back

Keep your distance from this for awhile...

You don't want to be hit by shrapnel when Microsoft lands it bloat on this in order to maintain it's stranglehold and monopoly on x86 emulation for the Mac! :D
 
Originally posted by Catfish_Man
G5 accelerated in the sense of running faster on G5s, not in the sense of actually being useably fast.

The only reason it runs on G5s is because it does not use any of the optimisations of VPC6, the emulator is fast enough to run Windows 98se on a G5 Mac, but don't expect to use it for anything more than office work or web creation type stuff. Judging by Bochs speed, which the emulator is based on, a Dual 2Ghz G5 should run Windows 98se about as fast as a 300Mhz PC.
 
Yea but it's the only option for G5s and nice to see at least they are maintaining it for the G5. It'll take ALL the programmers at M$ a full year to add G5 support!? Not sure how/why but it will.

Food for thought: Is it Apple's fault that the G5 left out support for VPC on purpose? If so, then why is Apple currently INCLUDING VPC compatibility with the Panther testing? Why make sure your newest OS includes support for VPC while breaking support for it on your newest hardware?
 
Originally posted by Kid Red
Yea but it's the only option for G5s and nice to see at least they are maintaining it for the G5. It'll take ALL the programmers at M$ a full year to add G5 support!? Not sure how/why but it will.

Food for thought: Is it Apple's fault that the G5 left out support for VPC on purpose? If so, then why is Apple currently INCLUDING VPC compatibility with the Panther testing? Why make sure your newest OS includes support for VPC while breaking support for it on your newest hardware?

Apple didn't design the PowerPC 970. I imagine they tried to get IBM to include psuedo little endian mode, but IBM probably thought it was too much work (and wouldn't benefit IBM at all).
 
Originally posted by Chealion
Why oh why are people paying $30 for free software?!? :rolleyes:

Go download Bochs, its easier and cheaper that way.

Doesn't it just come as source, not as a binary? I have a fair amount of Mac experience, and some UNIX experience too, but I'm still not in the habit of compiling my own programs too often (which is to say, never).
 
Originally posted by Kid Red
Is it Apple's fault that the G5 left out support for VPC on purpose?
While nothing's impossible, I find that tough to believe. If Apple wasn't planning/expecting VPC to run on the G5, they would really have said something when that article first said that the G5 could run windows programs and was edited to say it needed the emulator. With VPC being the only commercially available emulator, I think that Apple expected it to work.
 
All I can say is thank God it's a way to run those Windows programs without shelling out over $200 for VPC. I'm sure Microsoft will be doing something to stop it before too long, though. Even if it is slower, it is a whole lot cheaper whether is is free or $300, it beats the alternative (if it worked, at least).
 
Originally posted by Powerbook G5
All I can say is thank God it's a way to run those Windows programs without shelling out over $200 for VPC. I'm sure Microsoft will be doing something to stop it before too long, though. Even if it is slower, it is a whole lot cheaper whether is is free or $300, it beats the alternative (if it worked, at least).

Dude, it's not an alternative. I've heard stories of 24 hour Windows installs on this. FreeDOS LAGS. Saying Bochs is slow is like saying the speed of light is fast.
 
I've used bochs. It was slow. Very Slow. Slow. Slow. Slow.
Then I compiled it from source with fink. It was slow. Much faster, but still slow. Then again I was running it on a 400mhz pb. Which is infact slow. The only thing that I used it for was file sharing so I didn't care that it was Slow.
If my dual 2ghz, when and if it comes in, is in deed 5x as fast it will be 5x less slow. But still slow. I am not trying to discourage anyone from trying the software, it is free. On the subject of VPC why bother. You can put together a poop duron system for just a little more and it will be faster. If you don't want to pay for windows then just install linux and wine. If you don't want to have two monitors/keyboards/etc and you still want to use windows then load VNC(free) on it. If you are using linux you can do everything over X11.
 
Unix - off topic

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
Virus for Unix: When a dumb user goes to root and accidentally types rm *

Actually that wouldn't do any harm either, unless the dumb user was logged in as super-user (disabled by default) :cool: Even then "rm -rf *" would be the real killer ;)

Update: Sorry, seems like root is owned by the admin group, so any dumb admin-user would do:

bash-2.05a$ ll -d /

drwxrwxr-t 37 root admin 1258 Sep 5 10:17 //
:(
 
Originally posted by Catfish_Man
Dude, it's not an alternative. I've heard stories of 24 hour Windows installs on this.

I presume this was before version 2 ? The new version should be 2x faster for some operations. So maybe 12 hours ? :D
 
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