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$5747 (and rising) prize for booting XP on intel Mac

balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,365
979
New England
gekko513 said:
I know that RedHat has made a statement that they will make their distro run on the new Macs. That seems to imply that any old distro won't run.
Click to expand...
No, there are various 64 bit distros using EFI, inluding Debian.

The statement from Red Hat is encouraging, since it says that they intend to make it happen, but that's all it means. They are willing to spend the effort to make it so.

B
 
Arcus

Arcus

macrumors 6502a
Dec 28, 2004
718
329
of my hand will get me slapped.
Id be happy with MS doing a good version of Virtual PC. I only have one thing that I really need my PC for at home and that a game I play. Its 8 years old and it almost runs playable on my iBook G3 700 in VPC so I expect on the iMac it will be fine.
 
yankeefan24

yankeefan24

macrumors 65816
Dec 24, 2005
1,104
0
NYC
I know this is a little off topic, but what exactly does microsoft have to do to get VirtualPC running on the new intel macs? The guy at the apple store told me that VirtualPC was an emulator for an x86 chip and then runs windows on top of OS X. Now that they don't have to emulate an x86 chip, i think it could be pretty easy for microsoft to do this. I can't believe that no one has figured this out yet. Apple must have done something really special to prevent this. I realize that their is the EFI-BIOS difference, and i don't know how that works, but an experiened hacker should be able to get around that. I can't help but wonder how apple made it so hard to get this done.:rolleyes:
 
balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,365
979
New England
yankeefan24 said:
I know this is a little off topic, but what exactly does microsoft have to do to get VirtualPC running on the new intel macs?
Click to expand...
VPC is a Microsoft product, since they bought Connectix, and they already make a version for Windows http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/virtualpc/default.mspx. Basically it allows you to run other OSes in a sandbox so you can check for app compatibility etc... e.g. You can use VPC to run Windows 98 or Linux in a virtual machine on a machine that runs XP natively.

There just aren't too many people that have played with the EFI boot process out there yet, give it time.

B
 
Maestro64

Maestro64

macrumors regular
Jan 5, 2005
208
0
Philadelphia
Well I am betting Apple did something in the hardward to not allow it. Come on Apple has come out publicly and said that they did not mind if people attempted to install windows on a machine. If that is not a defiant challenge I am not sure what is.

It was like go ahead and try, but you will not be successful.
 
huck500

huck500

macrumors 6502
May 10, 2004
386
29
Southern California
I could think of nothing worse than having the ability to install one of the worst operating systems I've ever used on my brand new computer.
Click to expand...

Really?:confused: Dead puppies is worse...isn't it?

More options is usually a good thing, even if you don't take advantage.
 
bodeh6

bodeh6

macrumors 6502a
May 18, 2005
773
0
I am surprised that this is so hard to do. I mean with all the hackers and programmers out there should, they should have figured it out. I mean everything except the motherboard is shared with PC/Windows (CPU, GPU, audio, network card). Apple must have did something really special to stop this from happening. I mean we have XBOXs running Linux, PCs running OS X, PSP running something, hackers can do anything.
 
N

NeuronBasher

macrumors regular
Jan 17, 2006
188
0
Apple did not do anything "special" to restrict people from installing Windows, but neither did they go out of their way to make it easy. The crux of the problem is that they used EFI and not a traditional BIOS. On top of that, they did not include (because they didn't need it) the optional BIOS compatability mode with their EFI implementation. Nor did they include an EFI shell.

I could go into more detail, but there are far better descriptions of the current situation than I could give. People are working on it, and some progress is being made. It's hard to say how long it will take at this point, and whether or not it will require Vista which has some EFI support in latest builds.
 
jsfpa

jsfpa

macrumors regular
Oct 26, 2003
215
41
A different thought. (a little off topic)

Rather than running a full blown version of Windows, I'd like to see an emulator that will utilize the intel chip but only run "Windows" software in a window under OS X. Just for the the few peaces of software that I can't get for the Mac. I rather not have to dual boot.

Just a thought.:D
 
yankeefan24

yankeefan24

macrumors 65816
Dec 24, 2005
1,104
0
NYC
LGRW3919 said:
someone should make a "winxponmac.com $ total" widget!
Click to expand...

good idea. If i had any clue how to make widgets i would. If someone does make that let me know. I want one.
 
yankeefan24

yankeefan24

macrumors 65816
Dec 24, 2005
1,104
0
NYC
jsfpa said:
Rather than running a full blown version of Windows, I'd like to see an emulator that will utilize the intel chip but only run "Windows" software in a window under OS X. Just for the the few peaces of software that I can't get for the Mac. I rather not have to dual boot.

Just a thought.:D
Click to expand...

i don't think that would happen even though it would be cool. With that, you have both OSs running if you want/need them up. Also, if your not using it, its still up (in the backround), and if you don't want to use it, its there anyways.

having it up takes up performance speeds. I would prefer dual boot (or fast os switch) because there are only a few applications i need and alot of games that i want for windows. And if windows would run in the backround, then developers might stop making apps more OS X, and we dont want that.
 
Spanky Deluxe

Spanky Deluxe

macrumors demi-god
Mar 17, 2005
5,285
1,789
London, UK
jsfpa said:
Rather than running a full blown version of Windows, I'd like to see an emulator that will utilize the intel chip but only run "Windows" software in a window under OS X. Just for the the few peaces of software that I can't get for the Mac. I rather not have to dual boot.

Just a thought.:D
Click to expand...

What, you mean like Darwine?
 
D

DrNeroCF

macrumors 6502
Sep 2, 2004
276
0
Wait, someone's got bochs running universally full speed on an intel mac?

How is this not winning?

Screw dual booting...
 
RichP

RichP

macrumors 68000
Jun 30, 2003
1,580
33
Motor City
SiliconAddict said:
A-freaking-men. Thanks but I'd rather not carry around 12-13lbs worth of laptop hardware (two laptops.) because someone is being arrogant about their freaking platform.
Click to expand...

exactly!
 
kgarner

kgarner

macrumors 68000
Jan 28, 2004
1,512
0
Utah
slb said:
In addition, you lose hardware acceleration in virtualization. I want the full shebang.
Click to expand...
Correct me if I am wrong, but don't you only lose hardware acceleration if the program has to emulate the hardware? Since the Intel Macs are running on Intel processors, wouldn't that mean that they don't require hardware emulation? And wouldn't that meant that you could run a virtual machine (VPC, VMWare, what have you) at full speed? Personally, I would rather be able to run it in a window under OS X than have to close everything down and reboot. Just my opinion.

Of course, until the virtual machine programs are ready, I hope that they find a way to dual boot. Not that I would use it, but I think the ability would be great.
 
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