Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What's a good Windows Emulator
- Thread starter muticere
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
muticere said:
It would help to know what you want to run using a Window's emulator. There may be an option for you to run a different program or version instead of bothering with Windows on a mac.
muticere said:
Ouch- that's gonna be a tough one... VPC isn't a good one- & not only is it not cheap, it's EXPENSIVE... I feel for you on this one, I'm glad I don't need any "PC" only apps... If I did I'd probabaly look for for a cheap PC before I used an emulator though... That's just my opinion... Good Luck...
i think there's one called 'PearPC', i haven't used it but i hear that it's slower than VPC. well, at least it's not a lemon. 
cb911 said:i think there's one called 'PearPC', i haven't used it but i hear that it's slower than VPC. well, at least it's not a lemon.
AFAIK PearPC goes the *other* way
...it emulates PPC architecture so that MacOS X could be run off it on a Linux box or a Win PC.
Virtual PC is by far the easiest to use, supports the most features, and is the fastest.
But, it doesn't run on a G5. You'll have to wait till version 7, which is expected later this year.
If you need to run Windows on a G5 now, then get OpenOSX's Wintel . Not very difficult to use, but slower than Virtual PC on G4's.
But, it doesn't run on a G5. You'll have to wait till version 7, which is expected later this year.
If you need to run Windows on a G5 now, then get OpenOSX's Wintel . Not very difficult to use, but slower than Virtual PC on G4's.
So all the alternatives are slower than VPC, and VPC itself is painfully slow. Nice. So the question is "so you really need to use a Windows app that bad?" There are few occasions that the average person is going to be in such a tight spot that they "need" VPC. What do you want to do?
Horrortaxi said:
I actually need VPC for my tax refunds.... No other OS is supported than Winblows.
The only real good reason to ever use buggering Winblast: Cash return
MisterMe said:
Wow! I had never heard of Bochs, even though I knew about Wine and VPC and PearPC. I'm going to check it out just for fun. I wonder if I can get my NT4.0 workstation CD to run off it. Or maybe I can find my original win 95, which should be relatively fast...
a dell...
No seriously... at work we found it to be a better solution to buy a low end dell and use the mac version of MS's Remote Desktop Client than to buy and use VPC. You can get a low end dell with no monitor for $400 it will run faster than VPC while not slowing down your mac.
No seriously... at work we found it to be a better solution to buy a low end dell and use the mac version of MS's Remote Desktop Client than to buy and use VPC. You can get a low end dell with no monitor for $400 it will run faster than VPC while not slowing down your mac.
Thirteenva said:
In a way, this isn't such a bad suggestion. You can run RDC over airport express, right? If you get a simple PC without monitor, put it on a shelf next to your base station, and just log into it whenever you need windows.... I guess you might even be able to find other fun stuff to do with it, like let it be the one that provides iTunes to your stereo so you don't have to waste processor time on your Mac.
Oh, separate question: is Bochs Panther compatible? I couldn't find the answer on the Bochs page, or by googling, and the page I found that collects DMG's of the compiled version said Jag only....
mkrishnan said:
Yes it does.
Furthermore... you can get a switch and have it use the same monitor, keyboard and mouse as your desktop mac and switch between them with the push of a button.
Thirteenva said:
Desktop? *shudders* I hope never to buy another desktop as long as I live.
Of course some extenuating circumstance always seems to push me to do so anyway.
mkrishnan said:AFAIK PearPC goes the *other* way
oops. guess i just got a bit too excited, didn't bother to read futher about it.
mkrishnan said:Oh, separate question: is Bochs Panther compatible? I couldn't find the answer on the Bochs page, or by googling, and the page I found that collects DMG's of the compiled version said Jag only....
To answer my own question (if you want something done right...
) Bochs 2.0.2 DOES work on Panther. It isn't exactly point and click but I personally think its easier to get it running than it is to get Wine running under most Linux distros. Anyways I've been screwing around with it for about an hour and a half now and I've got WinNT 4.0 installing onto a 1 gig virtual drive in the background right now. Once I rooted all my typing errors in the rc file, it was actually quite easy to get this far. When NT tries to actually boot graphically, well, we'll see. Unfortunately, I found I don't have an OEM Win95 CD because we got it on floppies
for our 486DX/33 way back when, when we upgraded it, and my Compaq Armada came pre-installed and didn't have a CD player, so it also didn't come with a CD copy. Well, could be worse...it isn't Win98!!!I'll post back and let y'all know how it works tomorrow or something, if I can get it to actually boot into NT.
cb911 said:oops. guess i just got a bit too excited, didn't bother to read futher about it.
But who knows? There might be some appliction for it yet on top of OS X. People are apparently using Bochs on top of Win XP as a way to run multiple simultaneous OS's on a Win box.
I got bochs running on top of Panther with NT4.0 last night and this morning. It was pretty easy actually. I made an ISO of the boot CD and I made a 1 gig disk image with NTFS partitions for the OS and apps, and a FAT partition for documents, because Panther can read/write FAT but can only read NTFS.
Some notes, just in case they're useful to anyone, since the bochs docs are kinda limited:
- The installation was fairly smooth. You have to play with an rc file but it is pretty straightforward. NT4.0 crashed late in the installation (hung) but it was basically at the very end and it seems to have installed fine.
- It defaults to 640x480 x 16 colors, but apparently it is possible to get VESA display modes working. Have not succeeded in this yet.
- It is capable of networking, at least to the external world, although it sounds like a net connection between the emulated Windows and MacOS on the same computer is difficult. You have to add a line for networking in the RC, and I didn't put it in when I first installed NT from the directions. So I could not do the network detect during installation. And now, unfortunately, the post-install net setup seems to hang every time I try it.
In other words, for novice users, a debug run and a real install (starting over from scratch with bochs) is probably going to be necessary....
- You can mount the disk images it uses, including the C drive, in MacOS, even while bochs is running. But it doesn't look like real-time updating works. That is, as far as I can see, mods made to the image in MacOS don't show in NT until you reboot, and you have to dismount the drive in MacOS and re-mount after quitting bochs to see the NT changes. An image with multiple partitions will mount with no additional work as multiple disks in MacOS (*nice*!) but only FAT partitions in the .IMG will be writeable.
- It is unbelievably slow on an iBook G4 / 800. Especially installation programs. It took about three-four hours for NT install to run through its course, and more than half an hour to do the SP6a upgrade. And it uses a large slice of proc time (will gladly help itself to ~75%), making everything else really slow too. Overall impression of NT4 running on my iBook with minimal Mac apps (term, safari and mail) is something like NT4 on a 486/DX33 at best, slower if a lot of other Mac apps are fighting for sys time.
- I'm trying to install a piece of software on top of it, but one thing at a time.
I don't know how VPC would work on my system, but I have trouble seeing bochs being much more than a toy on a sub G5 machine...
Nonetheless, it is a fairly nice implementation, and it seems to *work*. And considering its free....
It was pretty easy actually. I made an ISO of the boot CD and I made a 1 gig disk image with NTFS partitions for the OS and apps, and a FAT partition for documents, because Panther can read/write FAT but can only read NTFS. Some notes, just in case they're useful to anyone, since the bochs docs are kinda limited:
- The installation was fairly smooth. You have to play with an rc file but it is pretty straightforward. NT4.0 crashed late in the installation (hung) but it was basically at the very end and it seems to have installed fine.
- It defaults to 640x480 x 16 colors, but apparently it is possible to get VESA display modes working. Have not succeeded in this yet.
- It is capable of networking, at least to the external world, although it sounds like a net connection between the emulated Windows and MacOS on the same computer is difficult. You have to add a line for networking in the RC, and I didn't put it in when I first installed NT from the directions. So I could not do the network detect during installation. And now, unfortunately, the post-install net setup seems to hang every time I try it.
In other words, for novice users, a debug run and a real install (starting over from scratch with bochs) is probably going to be necessary....
- You can mount the disk images it uses, including the C drive, in MacOS, even while bochs is running. But it doesn't look like real-time updating works. That is, as far as I can see, mods made to the image in MacOS don't show in NT until you reboot, and you have to dismount the drive in MacOS and re-mount after quitting bochs to see the NT changes. An image with multiple partitions will mount with no additional work as multiple disks in MacOS (*nice*!) but only FAT partitions in the .IMG will be writeable.
- It is unbelievably slow on an iBook G4 / 800.
Especially installation programs. It took about three-four hours for NT install to run through its course, and more than half an hour to do the SP6a upgrade. And it uses a large slice of proc time (will gladly help itself to ~75%), making everything else really slow too. Overall impression of NT4 running on my iBook with minimal Mac apps (term, safari and mail) is something like NT4 on a 486/DX33 at best, slower if a lot of other Mac apps are fighting for sys time. - I'm trying to install a piece of software on top of it, but one thing at a time.
I don't know how VPC would work on my system, but I have trouble seeing bochs being much more than a toy on a sub G5 machine...
Nonetheless, it is a fairly nice implementation, and it seems to *work*. And considering its free....