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PC and/or Windows Emulator Thread for Intel Macs

Steve1496 said:
Installing Windows XP directly into Q will not work. It's a problem with Qemu currently. You'll need to install XP on a PowerPC machine, or on a Windows Machine, then move it to your MacTel.
Click to expand...

This is looking too hard for me right now - I checked, and iEmulator seems to be making good progress, they think a solution will be available in about 2 weeks or less - in testing now. If anybody else has a good experience or a cookbook for getting XP Pro or Home up and running (under OS-X, not alternate boot), then please post it here. I'm willing to try anything known to work, but hacking around in Windows at the dll level is not for me and OpenOSX is not getting my business (completely unresponsive).

T
 
taylorpohlman said:
Great idea - for awhile I ran Groove on a remote server via Citrix client on Mac - worked very well, and Remote Desktop should work also. However, Since I use MacBook all over the place at clients premises, I was reluctant to set up a PC at home that was exposed to the Net - I don't have the time, patience or money to keep up with all the anti-virus, firewall and VPN stuff I'd need for security. How good is Remote Desktop in the security access area - can I put the PC on my DSL connection and still have it locked down against intruders?
Click to expand...

Get OpenVPN and set up a Virtual Private network over SSH. That way you can keep your computer behind your firewall except for one port open. You can set up OpenVNC to work with certificates rather than passwords thus unless anyone has your certificate they can't log on to your home machine.

I know how it all works but i've never tried it so i'm not the best person to ask how to :)
 
Some newbie questions regarding Q/QEMU:

1. It's an emulator a la VPC?

2. Windows 2000 installs and is stable? And you can install apps on top it?

3. Benchmarks or any indicator of what kind of performance you're getting?

4. How is the graphics being emulated? I need to run a 3D program (Rhino 3.0) that relys on OpenGL.

5. Has anyone tried AutoCAD or Rhino on Q?
 
dongmin said:
Some newbie questions regarding Q/QEMU:

1. It's an emulator a la VPC? No, it is virtualization

2. Windows 2000 installs and is stable? And you can install apps on top it?
Yes. I think.

3. Benchmarks or any indicator of what kind of performance you're getting?
Should run full speed (with a slight hit due to running OSX at the same time. Go core DUO!

4. How is the graphics being emulated? I need to run a 3D program (Rhino 3.0) that relys on OpenGL. I believe all Q/QEMU does is open a pathway for XP to use the system's hardware. XP will take care of rendering
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There you go. (someone please correct any erroneous answers)
Also, http://qemu.dad-answers.com/viewtopic.php?t=930
They are days, if not hours, away from running XP on a MBP! Exciting! Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, here I come!
 
Kingsly said:
Update: I downloaded Q and have it running on my eMac right now, installing XP professional edition. I must say, it is REALLY spunky and easy to use (eaiser and faster than VPC!!!) Good job Qpeople.:D
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This is great news - would you mind, for the sake of others, including me, to give us a walkthrough on what you did to get XP up under Q, and what build of Q you were using? I've downloaded Q, and tried to use the utility to get my XP transferred from VPC7 - as you can see from previous posts, we got stuck at XP boot time. however, if installing a full copy of XP works, then I'll buy one and take that route, but would love to have the benefit of your experience. Also, you said "eMac" above - did you mean that or "iMac" - we're trying to find solutions that work on the duocore intel macs.

Please advise,
T
 
taylorpohlman said:
This is great news - would you mind, for the sake of others, including me, to give us a walkthrough on what you did to get XP up under Q, and what build of Q you were using? I've downloaded Q, and tried to use the utility to get my XP transferred from VPC7 - as you can see from previous posts, we got stuck at XP boot time. however, if installing a full copy of XP works, then I'll buy one and take that route, but would love to have the benefit of your experience. Also, you said "eMac" above - did you mean that or "iMac" - we're trying to find solutions that work on the duocore intel macs.
Click to expand...
No, I'm emulating under PPC:(
As soon as I get my MBP (due next week!) I will post a tutorial (assuming, that is, I get it working). For now... I downloaded the latest "stable" release, set it to use the real CD drive and told it the boot disk was CD.
Then I simply inserted the disk and fired up the "computer"
Q did the rest. Amazing!
It took me like four hours for VPC to even see the install disk, and Q meanwhile is finalizing installation. :) :) :)
Check out my link above, it looks like the Qpeople are really, really close to a working kext of QEMU for OSX. They have gotten as far at the windows boot window and then suffer a kernel panic. I bet by the end of this week they will have worked out [most of] the bugs.
 
Kingsly said:
No, I'm emulating under PPC:(
As soon as I get my MBP (due next week!) I will post a tutorial (assuming, that is, I get it working).
Click to expand...

Thanks, looking forward to it!

T
 
Kingsly said:
Check out my link above, it looks like the Qpeople are really, really close to a working kext of QEMU for OSX. They have gotten as far at the windows boot window and then suffer a kernel panic. I bet by the end of this week they will have worked out [most of] the bugs.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I checked out the link - looks like they're busy, but a bit of a way from getting something stable - once the big bugs are out, it should really accelerate. Looks like they are operating somewhat in parallel to iEmulator (both on QEMU, trying to go native mac intel). Also check out Q for more info. Lots of people triangulating on the problem. Unfortunately, iEmulator isn't posting any news, but they do respond quickly to emails with status.

On the other hand, don't waste any time with OpenOSX (WinTel) - not only unresponsive, but they have a screwed up download process like a Coke machine that takes money but doesn't deliver the Coke - they are also (supposedly) using QEMU.

T
 
i need this to work...!

(posting just to subscribe to the thread...)



my ibook just bit the dust and i'm an architecture student... i need this to work... please mac geniuses of the world..


r.
 
>>Darwine 0.9.7 DP Universal Binary is out.

Couldn't get it to work on my macbook, said something about a missing file or something, why can't they get it to work out of the box as you say because I really have better things to do than mess around with x11 junk. Darwine is really immature, not even aqua.

And about QEMU performance. Well I installed win2k on it and ran cinebench. My macbook gets 515 in OSX. On QEMU the score was about 100. Pretty pathetic, that's around the speed of a 1ghz athlon or so. And no directx, useless for say playing half life 2.
 
Morn said:
>>Darwine 0.9.7 DP Universal Binary is out.
And about QEMU performance. Well I installed win2k on it and ran cinebench. My macbook gets 515 in OSX. On QEMU the score was about 100. Pretty pathetic, that's around the speed of a 1ghz athlon or so. And no directx, useless for say playing half life 2.
Click to expand...
Re this: Agree about Darwine, too limited for my purposes. However, could you describe a bit more detail about getting QEMU up on your MBP with win2k? For example, which version/build of QEMU? are you using any of the true native versions (Q, etc.) that execute intel code directly, or the emulator for intel (running on intel, I would expect a slowdown vs. direct processor execution)? Did you load from a win2k disk image, or install directly from CDs? As for performance, trust me, after long experience with Virtual PC, a 1Ghz athion would be a pleasure, but I'd hope that a true native solution would be faster.

As for games in Windows, it's not a priority for me, but it is for many - for that, you probably should look at some of the dual boot solutions (i.e. run win2k or XP directly on the hardware).
T
 
taylorpohlman said:
As for performance, trust me, after long experience with Virtual PC, a 1Ghz athion would be a pleasure, but I'd hope that a true native solution would be faster.
Click to expand...
I just installed VPC7 and, believe it or not, Windows XP professional edition ran faster under emulation (see eMac sig.) than most real PC's I've used (and Im not talking about 500mhz PII's or anything. Relatively new [>1.5 ghz] PC's)
 
I have Q with windows XP installed on my iMac Core Duo.

Performance is still crap (like Virtual PC)

It did run slighty more responsive than my powermac G5 dual 1.8 but not much more.
Perfomance felt like a Pentium 2 machine I installed xp on for a test.

Had to turn off apperance options to help performance.

Also XP sp2 Pro doesn't seem to have working sound on the intel mac, but does on the powermac??? go figure

----

to install on intel I had to install the xp image on the powermac and then copy the drive image etc onto the intel imac.
 
MacRumorUser said:
I have Q with windows XP installed on my iMac Core Duo.

Also XP sp2 Pro doesn't seem to have working sound on the intel mac, but does on the powermac??? go figure

to install on intel I had to install the xp image on the powermac and then copy the drive image etc onto the intel imac.
Click to expand...
Re this, I've noticed some differences in the sound handling on the MBP - for example, under load, or if sound is coming from a back window, the sounds seems distorted. It's possible that there is a different approach to sound generation in the intel line - frankly, I'm not impressed as much with the sound fidelity for system sounds, compared to my old PB.

On the other hand, most posts say that the DVD/video playback, and iTunes playback are fine, so it could just be my machine - however, if they have changed the sound drivers and underlying hardware, that might be why there's no sound. Drivers for Q for the mac that do the mapping into XP sound drivers may be looking for something that's not there, or different parameters, etc.

Anybody know anything about how sound was implemented in the intel series vs. PPC? Are they using an intel chip (as they are for 802.11)?
T
 
MacRumorUser said:
I have Q with windows XP installed on my iMac Core Duo.

Performance is still crap (like Virtual PC)

It did run slighty more responsive than my powermac G5 dual 1.8 but not much more.
Perfomance felt like a Pentium 2 machine I installed xp on for a test.
Click to expand...
Frankly, this is very good news - I was running VPC7 on a 1Ghz G4 PB 17" and it's pretty painful. If I could get anything near the performance of running VPC on a dual 1.8G5 working on my MBP, it would be a great improvement - I don't use it for games, so I have more patience than those who do.

However, obviously when the Q code line get the native acceleration figured out, all those issues will go away. Oh happy day...
T
 
Update from iEmulator

Got this today in response to my email to iEmulator tech support on their status and my troubles with WinTel (OpenOSX). Sounds like they are making progress, but behind schedule - original date was to be mid-Feb:

"That's precisely the reason we haven't released an Intel-native version of iEmulator; we're not yet happy about the compatibility level it offers.* We will (at least) equal 1.7.8's stability, but until we do, we will not release an update.* We'd rather be late than "bad"!* "

I have asked them to update status on various intel Mac threads - I think they are worried about all the flames about WinTel, and want to avoid that, but its frustrating not to hear anything. They are apparently working with QEMU as a base, and adding acceleration - word is that the PPC 1.7.8 is good, but slow, like all the emulators...

T
 
I received the email quoted below from Jeshua Lacock at OpenOSX, and don't know whether to believe it or not - I got burned once, and got my money back (through Master Card). Also, originally on their site, they said they were now using QEMU (including Fabrice's stuff), but now it looks like they're back to Bochs. It's not so much the money, I don't want to waste my time if they're blowing smoke, and I'd also like to get the news around if what they're saying doesn't work.

So, if you've heard anything about this OpenOSX WinTel new version, I'd like to know.

On a different note, it looks like the guys over on the QEMU forum QEMU Forum for Mac OS X are making progress - the news about the dual booting breakthrough has got the talk going, although that's not a solution that I want.

T

--Start of email quote--

On 3/15/06 7:45 PM, "OpenOSX Sales" <sales@OpenOSX.com> wrote: Dear valued customer,

We are proud to announce that we now have our latest version of
WinTel 2.1.2 now available to you as a free update.

Our 2.1.2 version brings:

1. Hand-compiled, aggressively-optimized Bochs binaries that can
be used to install Windows XP in about 10% of the time previously
required on Intel Macs.

2. On PowerPC Macs, the "Dynamic Translation" option may now be
used for installing Microsoft Windows in about 10% of the time
previously on PowerPC Macs (Mac OS X 10.4 or greater is required).

3. Resolves a potential issue with the "Image CD-ROM" feature.

If you are planning to install Microsoft(R) Windows XP, make sure you
visit our updated XP tutorial. We have updated some very important
information regarding XP installation on the page: <http://www.openosx.com/XP-Tutorial/03.html>.
 
taylorpohlman said:
I received the email quoted below from Jeshua Lacock at OpenOSX, and don't know whether to believe it or not - I got burned once, and got my money back (through Master Card).
Click to expand...
If you could only get your money back through Mastercard after all of your troubles, I would just write them off.
 
Kingsly said:
Has anyone gotten Darwine working? I tried and it installed a bunch of Xcode projects.
Click to expand...
Not me - I took a look, and not only is it pretty unstable, per the developers, it's really practical only for fairly stand-alone apps, not the complex groupware that I need to run that wants the full XP/2000 environment. I've seen some posts that people have gotten some stuff to work, but at this point, it's a great goal, not a great product yet.
T
 
Ready to bring up XP

I have been scanning the posts, and have decided that many of the tricks are not ready for the kind of simple approach needed for most commercial-style users. So... I've gotten a full copy of XP-Pro SP2, and installed Q and imported my VPC7 instance of XP-Pro. As previously mentioned, I know that the VPC7 image won't boot under Q (missing .dll, etc.).

So...I am going to try two primary paths. First, I'll crank up Q, point it to the CD, and try to do a straight XP install onto a fresh Q disk. Assuming that works, I will then try to update/install the new XP onto the old imported VPC7 disk (the Q version). With any luck, the XP install on that disk won't have the same problems, and I'll have my VPC7 environment, with all my old applications, intact.

I'll post the results.

T
 
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