Virtual PC on new mac

marcukmarcuk
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I had been converted to the dark side for a year or so, but I wish to come back to the mac, for all the obvious reasons! I do need some PC software though to run at a reasonable speed, while I will be keeping my dual Athlon, I really just want to leave it set up as a renderfarm and not have to mess with monitor switchboxes and 2 keyboards and mice.



I really want to get a dual G5 rev 2, but I might be only to afford a Dual G4 1.25 or the lowest G5 when I factor in the cost of platform changing software again.



How fast in MHZ terms could I expect the dual G4 to emulate a PC roughly, and if anyone has a dual g5, how good is the PC.



I really need about 500mhz emulation to run stuff like AutoCad, MathCad and Borland C++ 5 for my courses.



Thankyou.



edit- and just for the hell of it, I want to run my Amiga emulator under VirtualPC and then run the Commodore 64 emulator in the Amiga. Crazy fool:

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Virtual PC can not run on the G5.



    Short explanation:



    The x86 architecture uses little endian byte ordering whereas PowerPC uses big endian ordering. The G3/G4 had a way to flip bytes quickly. The G5 does not. So, Microsoft will have to rewrite a good portion of Virtual PC's low-level code to get it working on the G5. This will very likely make VPC run much slower than it already does because all these memory conversions being done automagically in hardware will have to now be done in software.



    *sigh*



    There's always Darwine, but it it'll be a while before it's in any usable state... and who knows how good or bad the performance will be. Bochs' performance is horrible.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    marcukmarcuk Posts: 4,442member
    I thought the latest .dot release of VPC was G5 compatable. Was I mistaken?



    Off to check website, is it Connectix or Microsoft now?
  • Reply 3 of 6
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    One review I've read:



    "According to the Microsoft website, and inspite of the write here, Virtual PC 6.1.1 still does not work with the G5 processor."



    So, no. Microsoft bought Connectix; Connectix is no more. Besides that, I can find no word on Microsoft's web site claiming G5 compatibility. Where did you see it?



    It is the next major version, Virtual PC 7, that should include G5 support.

    Microsoft announces Virtual PC 7 with G5 support
  • Reply 4 of 6
    marcukmarcuk Posts: 4,442member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Brad

    One review I've read:



    "According to the Microsoft website, and inspite of the write here, Virtual PC 6.1.1 still does not work with the G5 processor."



    So, no. Microsoft bought Connectix; Connectix is no more. Besides that, I can find no word on Microsoft's web site claiming G5 compatibility. Where did you see it?



    It is the next major version, Virtual PC 7, that should include G5 support.

    Microsoft announces Virtual PC 7 with G5 support



    Sorry, i thought v6.11 was the one, slight memory fade. I guess v7 will be crippled to make a dual 3ghz G5 run like a P100.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    marcukmarcuk Posts: 4,442member
    then again i found this



    http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=2842



    ok, it originates from MOSR
  • Reply 6 of 6
    dobbydobby Posts: 797member
    We run VPC6.0 on a couple of Dual 1.25Mhz (1.5GB ram).

    We mainly use XP Outlook and a couple of accounting/quoting progs. They seem to work fine. It's not exactly straight forward (what is from MX) to setup but speed wise its okay.

    We used a second HD for the XP volume.

    The cost is a pain. First MS VPC then a XP lic then a Office XP lic.



    It works tho.



    Dobby.
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