VPC Hack
Don't know if anyone is willing to try this and confirm it, but I caught this at the MacRumors.com forums:
[quote]check this out
do this if you want to run VPC and mega speed like a real PC, its a little tricky but you can get it done
If you need to REALLY run Windows 95 at it's fastest on your Mac, do this with VPC: On another partition create a bare bones System (sorry, without another partition, this will not work), remove EVERY extension except the Appearance extension, and every control panel except the Appearance control panel. Then move the VPC preference file into the new System's preference folder. Also move the VirtualPC app itself into the System folder. Remove the Finder from the System, throw it in the trash and delete it. Use ResEdit to change the VPC app's 'creator' code to MACS and 'type' to FNDR. Then rename VirtualPC? to Finder. Then reboot holding down "ShiftOption-Command-Delete", this will force your Mac to boot from a System other than your startup disk. !!DO NOT CHANGE THE STARTUP DISK IN THE STARTUP DISK CONTROL PANEL!! If you do, it will be murder trying to get it to boot back to MacOS. Now what you have is Windows 95 booting instead of MacOS, and the performance increase is more than double! Alas, you will not be able to use the MacOS while you are running VPC like this, but you WILL still be able to share ANY Mac folder!, but if you NEED to use Win95, this is the best way to do it Now to get back to the MacOS, just quite VPC as normal, saving it where you left off, and then once it has saved the data to the disc, you just force-restart "Control-Command-PowerKey", and your Mac will safely boot back to MacOS. BTW, all networking is STILL available from the PC using it this way, it's great! On my 8500/180 I am getting speeds that my PC loving friend says are faster than his 200MMX, so believe me, it kicks ***! If you want to play games on VPC, this is the way to do it.<hr></blockquote>
Sounds interesting...
[quote]check this out
do this if you want to run VPC and mega speed like a real PC, its a little tricky but you can get it done
If you need to REALLY run Windows 95 at it's fastest on your Mac, do this with VPC: On another partition create a bare bones System (sorry, without another partition, this will not work), remove EVERY extension except the Appearance extension, and every control panel except the Appearance control panel. Then move the VPC preference file into the new System's preference folder. Also move the VirtualPC app itself into the System folder. Remove the Finder from the System, throw it in the trash and delete it. Use ResEdit to change the VPC app's 'creator' code to MACS and 'type' to FNDR. Then rename VirtualPC? to Finder. Then reboot holding down "ShiftOption-Command-Delete", this will force your Mac to boot from a System other than your startup disk. !!DO NOT CHANGE THE STARTUP DISK IN THE STARTUP DISK CONTROL PANEL!! If you do, it will be murder trying to get it to boot back to MacOS. Now what you have is Windows 95 booting instead of MacOS, and the performance increase is more than double! Alas, you will not be able to use the MacOS while you are running VPC like this, but you WILL still be able to share ANY Mac folder!, but if you NEED to use Win95, this is the best way to do it Now to get back to the MacOS, just quite VPC as normal, saving it where you left off, and then once it has saved the data to the disc, you just force-restart "Control-Command-PowerKey", and your Mac will safely boot back to MacOS. BTW, all networking is STILL available from the PC using it this way, it's great! On my 8500/180 I am getting speeds that my PC loving friend says are faster than his 200MMX, so believe me, it kicks ***! If you want to play games on VPC, this is the way to do it.<hr></blockquote>
Sounds interesting...
Comments
The performance gains are minimal.
Don't believe the hype.
The only reason VPC would perform any better with this "hack" would be because the Finder isn't using any RAM -- because it isn't running. That is literally the only difference here. This just makes VPC launch at boot time instead of the Finder. It doesn't do anything else to enhance performance.
Just FYI, I've read similar instructions like this to make Internet kiosks. Rather than VPC, use Internet Explorer, iCab, Mozilla, etc. as the fake Finder app. It works rather well but, as I said, doesn't really help performance-wise unless you have really low RAM or can't afford for the Finder to use any compute cycles in the background.
[ 06-07-2002: Message edited by: starfleetX ]</p>