It can. They are sort of usable on the last iteration of PM G5s but obviously not as zippy as on Intel hardware. A lot more responsive than XP on VPC7, though.
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Windows XP on PowerPC?
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Oh it was. This thread is a little old now. I know for a fact it was.
Wasn't that just the state of computing at the time? Classic Mac OS was practically infamous for those types of stability problems (since it had never been designed for multi-tasking). Was there a platform you preferred? I guess NT?
I can’t remember. I’d have to check. I think it was just NT 5.1 and 5.2. But 5.0 could’ve been there too.
Being older doesn't prevent people from acting like idiots.
Unfortunately not but it does make their juevenile behaviour all the more irritating.
NT was fine for me, and as I said 2000 was solid. I wasn't a heavy gamer for most of the time that I used NT so I didn't see the differences there, but for overall stability NT rarely crashed or crumbled during file workflows or development. Sometimes a rouge bug would hit me but I could usually trace it to a glaring issue in the software itself. Just unfortunate that it brought the whole OS down with it, which is obviously a problem that Windows deals with to today.
This. I hate 9x. I grew up using 98SE, and later XP. I discovered later that I liked 2000 (and then 2003) way better.
I actually still have my first computer ever, it's a 120MHz Pentium Packard Bell tower. It's currently running Windows 2000 because I tried 98SE (which is what it had when I was a kid) but after 3 bluescreens I gave up. Now it runs with stability albeit slowly. I'm debating on attempting to install Rhapsody on it...I also hated DOS even though it was the first thing I ever used according to my grandma. If I'm gonna use a CLI I'm gonna use FreeBSD. I like Linux too but; I run TrueNAS and pfsense so, I kinda got a liking FreeBSD a bit.
No, VPC is an x86 emulator. You can run the x86 version of NT 3 and 4 on it but not the PPC version.
I read that a PPC Mac would probably run NT the PPC version if the bootloader was compatible with open firmware.
That means literally nothing. Other than increased stability. My main OS used to be Windows Server 2003. That's like saying XP professional isn't better than Home edition (it is).
How was using a server OS as your main system? I've toyed with the idea but never have gone through with it.
It was fine. You can go in and enable the desktop services, disable the server ones. I followed this guide back in the day.
The only thing that would happen sometimes things would complain while being installed. Sometimes it was fixed by setting it to Windows XP compatibility mode, other times it was fixed with a simple removal of the OS check using Orca.
I loved using it. It’s the only way to get the stable NT 5.2 system on a 32bit machine.
I ran it on my Pentium 3 thinkpad mainly.
Pretty much anything that ran on XP or 2000 would run on it. I even got some of the later XP specific apps working, like movie maker and WMP11. Anti Viruses were the only things that actually didn’t work, which was fine because I never use them anyways. I find them pointless unless you fall for stupid stuff on the internet. After around the age of 10 I figured out how easy it was to use common sense and not get viruses.
Ok, cool! I'll definitely have to try that at some point. Thanks for the info
Back in the day I couldn't afford a Server 2003 license and used those free 180-day evaluations. That meant having to reinstall every six months but... a decent MS OS for free.
That's pretty awesome. I think you can do the same thing with their newest server OS still
I used Server 2003 at work a lot, similarly solid to 2000 for the time I had with it. Can't say it's 100% better than 2000 as I haven't gotten the chance to replicate my 2000 workflow on 2003, but I was impressed with it when I used it.
2000 is my absolute favorite version of Windows. I generally consider it the peak of improvement in Windows NT versions.
Funnily, if you make Server 2003 identify as a workstation OS you get "XP Pro Version 2003". If you turn XP into a server OS it says "Whistler Server" and is... broken.
Honestly, all this talk of Windows for workstations and servers is putting me in the mood to do some videos where I set up virtual machines featuring these versions and mess around with them.
Go for it!!! 👍Honestly, all this talk of Windows for workstations and servers is putting me in the mood to do some videos where I set up virtual machines featuring these versions and mess around with them.
Epic! I intend to!
Also I know there was a non-commercial release of NT for SPARC. I think it was NT 3.5. It would be epic if I could get ahold of that and get a SPARC system to run it on.
Heh, this reminded me of when O'Reilly and others mentioned the Registry trick to swap over the identities of NT Workstation and Server. That and NTSwitch until that was pulled. I wonder how many NT Server installations were actually legit and licensed back then.
Yay, another lockdown hobby until I hit a dead end searching. I have read plenty about WinNT in all of its incarnations but have never heard of a Sparc edition. I have some boxes, now to find the software.Epic! I intend to!
Also I know there was a non-commercial release of NT for SPARC. I think it was NT 3.5. It would be epic if I could get ahold of that and get a SPARC system to run it on.
They probably want some uncrackable activation, though, knowing Sun. i remember MAE for Sparc. No keys for anything beyond 1.0 and no way to obtain one.
That's what I meant in post #118. It gets real funny on XP and 2003.
It wasn't Sun that made the port, so that might help the case of activation. I really want to try NT on all of its supported platforms
I have a SPARC (Classic, I think) but sans keyboard and mouse. From what I've seen on eBay (UK), the prices for replacements are not cheap.