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Apple Businesses

OS Emulation Extravaganza, OS X On Down 183

Posted by timothy from the top-this-if-you-have-the-ram dept.
HomeBrewR writes: "Behold the power of MacOS X... Windows XP? Who cares! You guys arent going to believe what I was able to do in one bored day at work. http://www.mystaticip.com/homebrew shows my effort. I took OS X 10.1, installed fink with rootless Xfree86 with IceWM running BasiliskII [running MacOS 7.6]. OS X is also running ircle and VPC test drive running Windows XP. Simply amazing. The speed on this iBook 466SE of all the apps left much to be desired. This was a feasibility test. The speed of either one of the emulators running by themselves was decent if you turned off all the eye candy in Windows XP. I'm REALLY interested in getting BasiliskII up and running to be able to play all those games that OS 8 broke...stuff like Ancient Art of War and Vette. Check it out and have fun duplicating the effort HomeBrewR" The question I'm sure you're asking now is Why stop there?
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OS Emulation Extravaganza, OS X On Down More

OS Emulation Extravaganza, OS X On Down

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  • Just curious. Running an arcade emulator would just be another level.

  • Slow connection + big graphics = really fast slashdotting

    :(

  • Slashdotted (Score:3, Funny)

    by affenmann ( 195152 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @04:45PM (#2487961)
    Maybe he is running his web-server under Linux in a VMWARE emulation in his emulated XP...

  • ...this is important _how_? Really, someone, clue me in. Is it just a terribly slow day or something? Yes, yes, I know, this is Slashdot, where "News For Ners" can mean anything from the kind of toilet paper Bill Gates uses to the latest version of 'ls', but really, is there _nothing_ going on in the tech world of any greater significance?

    By the way, since his server is going to quickly go down in a ball of hot silicon (he has two pictures, one a 300+k jpg, the other one a tiff--don't want to think how enormous that is), I will describe the jpg to you, to save a click:

    The top shows OS X's menu bar, while the bottom has IceWM's taskbar, with the OS X's dock on the left side. In the upper right hand corner is a window running/emulating a System 7.6 desktop with an "About This Computer" window showing 62 out of 66 mb of memory used. Halfway hidden behind that window is a window of WinXP, showing the grotesquely large WinXP start menu. Fascinating, isn't it?

    :Peter
    • WTF, why is this modded insightful? We're nerds/geeks, and shit like this is cool to us, so technically, it matters.

      Nobody's forcing your ass to read /. anyway.
      • Speak for yourself my friend. The fact is this guy started up a couple of apps and got posted as an article on slashdot. If somewhere in there he happened to develop a new technique for emulation, perhaps it would be "news for nerds." Or maybe if he was using this to solve some unique and persistent problem that a number of people had encountered... But he didn't. Truly, he just ran some apps. It's no different than me taking a screenshot of my desktop at any random moment and sending it in. Hmmm that gives me ideas...
    • Well, actually I was looking for something totally different, but this article aroused my interests. Somebody once told me about /. but somehow I never got around to reading it regularly. When I saw this emulation article I was very fascinated because I AM currently looking into finally ridding myself of the PC-WORLD and getting a G4. So for me this article was totally interesting. It's what people do, it's fun to see it work and hell if I have any problems getting exactly the same setup running, I will bomb the author with questions - sorry ;-)

  • Been there done that... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pridkett ( 2666 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @04:48PM (#2487970) Homepage Journal
    Maybe not to that extreme...But I've done pretty much the same a little over a year ago with a PowerBook G3 running at 233Mhz. The Windows was on a different system in the shot, but it was through VMWare. MythII was running locally as was MacOnLinux. Now if only someone hadn't stolen that laptop I could still be having fun like that, but that beg's the question, why so much? I actually had a legitimate use for most of that stuff for various work projects, but rarely did I actually need them all at once.

    here you see it [wagstrom.net]

    It's odd that there's a map in Myth II with the same name as a church I go.
  • The question I'm sure you're asking now is Why stop there?

    No, actually, it's "Why FULLstop".

    Just kiddin.

  • Help! I can't get any work done (Score:3, Funny)

    by MrNovember ( 310587 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @04:55PM (#2487983)
    Will someone please help me? I am trying to install Linux in VMWare on Windows running in VMWare on Linux runnin in VMWare on Windows running...

    I just can't get anything done -- when do I stop? Someone please reset me.

  • I have a new Tynan Thunder setup with dual Athlons
    3 GB of installe memory, this board left me 5 pci slots+ an AGP Pro slot,
    2 have PowerPC dual G4 PCI cards with 512 MD ram on each
    1 Soundblaster Platinum PCI card
    1 Matrox G400 Dual head PCI card
    1 TvTuner PCI card
    1 Geforce3 AGP pro card.
    4 scsi drives in a raid

    NOW, I run Mandrake 8.1 on the box itself, with VMware to open windows 9x/nt/2k/XP, One of PPC PCI cards boots OSX, the other to run mandrake 8.1 PPC which also runs Mac-on-Linux where I can boot Mac )S 7,8, or 9... 3 monitors one big 22" in the middle of 2 19 " on either side. X being what it is I can put any OS on any display and call it a workspace. the board includes 2 10/100 ethernet ports, one plugs into my cable modem, the other goes to a hub which allows 6 different old PC's to work as X terminals, where the apps run on the server (PPC or X86 OS) and displays on the Xterminals. walking up to an Xterminal and placing your thumb on the USB fingerprint scanner brings your workspace to that station.
    All of this I can use from my Yopy with 802.11b. and the head mounted display (in case I'm ever outside)

    well I can dream can't I?

  • Shame, really. (Score:3, Funny)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @05:07PM (#2488012) Homepage
    He could have completed the circle by running a MacOS emu... and iterated again. :)

  • Mirror (Score:4, Informative)

    by helixblue ( 231601 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @05:14PM (#2488025) Homepage
    http://www.webcache.org/a/2001/10/27/www.mystatici p.com/homebrew/index.html

    Hopefully it can handle it. :) I can definitely say I love MacOS X, and without a doubt -- you can run more apps from MacOS X than any other OS, especially if you throw in Virtual PC.

    I myself run WinXP in VirtualPC.. but I've been struggling to figure out why I bought VirtualPC other than to try XP? Is there really any Windows app I need?

    Oh.. ya, Civ3 is being released for Windows first.. that's why I need it!

    • The real trick is to run NeXTStep on that VirtualPC drive. I did, it's quite silly.
      • ive done OPENSTEP 4.2 (NeXTStep) *and* WinXP in VPC... too bad there are no video drivers in openstep that jives with the VPC emulated video card =\
    • Is there really any Windows app I need?

      Well, it is a DOS app, but X-COM UFO Defense [users.auth.gr] is a great reason to put VPC on a Mac!
      • lol, that is truely the only reason why I keep VPC around. Tis the best game of all time... someone should try to get them to release the source... nobody is going to buy it anymore, and it could use with a bugfix or fifty :)

        Blibbler

  • Heres the Pic on a much beefier machine (Score:4, Informative)

    by jgaynor ( 205453 ) <jon@@@gaynor...org> on Saturday October 27, 2001 @05:24PM (#2488039) Homepage
    Picture Mirrored on a good server [rutgers.edu]

    It looks pretty cool - cant think of what use this would be though. This guys website has no text about it at all. It goes something like:

    Dayam I love Mac OSX - look what I did.

    No lie thats all it says.

  • Now what is so amazing about that?

    I mean, you can do that under most platforms...

    Like hell, watch me run Basilisk II under linux, then run Win4Lin.. funny thing is, it'll do Basilisk the same speed as it would under OS X (they're both emulated), while Win4Lin is virtualization software, which will run FAST

    Like maybe I'm missing something, but what is so special about this?
  • I just love the /. writeups that I have to read very slowly and several times over before beginning to understand what they are trying to say...

    Or, in the same style as such a writeup:
    I just love it. Writeups that I need very slowly to read and several times over before understanding them. Their good.
  • I don't blame Unix users who laugh at Mac fanatics who are just now uncovering the power of Unix.

  • Just for the hell of it. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @05:33PM (#2488072) Journal
    One extremely bored weekend, on a win2k box..

    VMware with redhat linux running UAE
    Vmware with Win98SE for games.
    BaliskII with net access running os8
    WinUAE playing .mods

    Then,
    Running VNC to my linux box with IceWM with qnx theme.
    Running VNC to my wifes 98se box
    My linux box mounting my Win2k drives with sharity
    My win2k box mounting my linux boxes with samba
    Xwin32 running a file manager on the unix box that was looking at my win2k mounted drives.
    Netscape exported back.
    Running eFX with enlightenment skin.
    Exporting Gimp back and viewing pictures on my local drives.
    Mirc in desktop mode with transparency.
    tclock for looks and to replace the start button.
    econsole - I use dterm for win32 now.
    And when not listening to mods, Sonique with background visuals.

    Lots of cool stuff out there, emulators for almost everything, mame/consoles/64/amiga/atari/mac/apple/etc..
    And tons of programs to make windows look the way you want, or even go wild with litestep/graphite/etc..

    If your interested in tweaking and shell enhacements check out Shell City [shellcity.com] daily updates with new programs.
    Customize.org [customize.org] and Floachs site [pimpin.net] are a must visit also.

  • in a continent, on an ocean... There's one at the top of Green Bay. Is that the most levels?

    More to the point: Since everyone is making the same joke about running emulators in emulators, what's the record for number of OSes running inside other OSes? Has anyone actually hit the fourth level, say?

    Just idle curiosity...

    • Re:Island in a lake in an island in a lake - Yes, (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Goto:

      http://linas.org/linux/i370.html

      Take a gander at:

      http://penguinvm.princeton.edu/hercules/index.ht ml
      shows OS/360 MFT running on the Hercules System/370 emulator on Linux/390 running as a guest machine in VM/ESA

      Satisfied?

  • Useful Link (Score:4, Informative)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @05:42PM (#2488093) Homepage
    Emaculation.com [emaculation.com] Is one of the most popular mac-emulation sites on the net and has useful information on setting up Mac emulators (currently, there is no ppc software-based mac emulator :-( )

  • Emulate my brain! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bongo ( 13261 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @05:59PM (#2488114)
    Well hey, I beowulfed some neuronal organisms to form a neural cord, on top of which I then booted a reptilian brain stem. Then we emulated a limbic system, and added a running neocortex. Lastly, we mounted a full complex neocortex image!
    Now it can eat, kill, fu*k, feel happy and sad, do basic math and wonder about the meaning of life.
    Next we're trying to see if we've got enough spare cycles to initialise some basic psychic/saintly procedures...
    Mind you, performance is terrible. Aggressive funcions are very quick, but it seems permanently stuck in a loop in some lower subroutine concerning sex, while taking forever to compute simple empathy matrices.
    We're seriously considering a complete cold reboot, but then it did once turn water into wine. Maybe we should just leave it running, what do you think?

  • Emulators for MacOS (Score:3, Informative)

    by Arkham ( 10779 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @06:44PM (#2488203)
    www.emulation.net [emulation.net] is the best site around for Mac users. They have links to every mac emulator under the sun, from Palm to Playstation to Amiga. They do Arcade machines, Computers, Consoles, and Handheld devices.

    With this site someone could make a MUCH better picture than the one shown.

    • Emulation.net rocks! Not only has John Stiles put together a great website, he has also done many of the ports to Mac OS and has even written a few unique games (such as Candy Crisis - http://www.candycrisis.com).
  • The release of XP caused me to fire up VMWare once again.

    I have to say.. I'm quite impressed by VMWare. Very solid product.

    I was demonstrating remote X displays to a friend... from the solarisx86 box he's been playing with.

    I showed him how to bring up a gnome desktop (running on redhat7, running on vmware on win2k) on his solaris box.

    I was very surprised at the performance.

  • Mac OS X
    WindowsXP
    X-Windows?

    Is there some kind of pattern.. What is it? Why is it? I'm scared :(
    • IMHO, the pattern is:

      X-windows was here first. It works with Unix or Linux. So apple sees sees the similarity and takes advantage of being the only mainstream OS near a 9.0 release, so since they are already thinking Uni(x), they switch from version 10.0 to X in the label. Maybe the X has to do with the X in Unix also :)

      And then, XP comes in when Microsoft sees that the MacOs is picking up pace. Apparently, we don't need to wait 3 years for MS to upgrade a version: 95 -> 98 -> ME -> 2000 -> 2001.

      Windows 2001 is XP because they had to stick the X to not suffer from what would have otherwise been a bad looking name. And they had to copy the OS X candy interface to seem boldy innovative.

      It pains me that version numbers and now version NAMES are so important, because Netscape 6 [5th release of Netscape catching up to AOL 5 and 6] and MSN 5 [3rd release of MSN internet catching up to AOL 5.0] break version naming rules to catch up to more advanced software... version-wise at least. That's the pattern I see.
      • So to sum up... X-Windows is fine, no problem with that. Mac OS X are actually using the roman numeral X instead of 10.. therefore OS 11 will be XI etc... except the PR who thought of this master plan will have left and no-one will remember why they really called it X, so the next version will be X-2/or X-II. Windows XP - if someone could tell me what X.P. stood for i would be happy, otherwise i think they are just seeking attention.

        I like the non-commercial approach where there are no deadlines to meet or tacky marketing PR people to mess up and new versions x.x.2 x.x.4 etc... appear every month or so to fix bugs.
      • Netscape 5 was in the works, but it was trashed part of the way through in favor of a complete rewrite.

        Microsoft played leapfrog with Word purely for marketing reasons to catch up with WordPerfect's version number, just as you say.

        Adobe went from Illustrator 4 on the PC to 7 for the PC to get their different platform versions straight (AI for Mac was at 6 while PC was at 4).

        And MS didn't copy the OS X GUI, they just made a really pathetic attempt at doing it. OS X represents a completely new way of rendering the screen, but MS just tried to make XP look like it using the same old GDI.
      • I think it's simply because many of the UNIXen have an X somewhere in the name, maybe they think it's cool.

        UNIX, QNX, Lynx OS, IRIX, XENIX, Linux, NeXTSTEP, Mac OS X
  • This is a great feasability test of MacOSX and a wonderful display of current technologies availabile for the platform. Awesome results, too! Long live OSX!
    --
    Chevell
    http://www.macosx.org
  • what I was able to do in one bored day at work

    I guess someone are lucky, I don't think that I have had a day like that for a year.
    Why oh why must I work for a IT company that does not suffer from the downtrend. Sigh.. :-)

  • Mac OS X 10.1 & Performance in general. (Score:3, Informative)

    by wdavies ( 163941 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @09:34PM (#2488527) Homepage
    Hi,

    First off, this is slightly off-topic. I just wanted to relate my experience with 10.1 last week. I got a copy after months of procrastination and installed it on a G3 450mhz (the Blue and White type). I'd also like to note that I'm not really trying to start a flame war. I am a big fan of *nixes in general (I first worked on a PDP11 running some kind of Nix back in 82), I am also (strangely for a nix zealot) a huge Mac fan. I'm not a big fan of any Nix GUI nor of windows. Mainly I'm posting this because for the first time in several jaded years, something in mainstream Computing made me go "Wow!". Forget the iPod. The experience below hasjust made me decide that OSX is an incredible achievement.

    The install was the easiest I have ever done, especially amazing considering there is a *Nix beneath. I went from 9.0 to 9.1, 9.1 to 10, 10 to 10.1 and finally upgraded the 9.1 to 9.2 The only hiccup was that I only got developer tools for 10.0 -- they don't work with 10.1 -- and although I bought a 10.1 Installation, that kit didnt come with 10.1 developers tools -- download from connect.apple.com.

    So far so good -- it isn't rocket fast, but not slow enough to impair productivity at all.

    My long term aim is a Powerbook running my work development environment which is Dynamo and Weblogic based. I really dislike my Tecra 8100.

    So, the rest of the afternoon I checked out our CVS tree -- all 300 Megs.... Yes -- I was able to switch to ZSH, and access CVS via SSH without installing a single piece of software (other than creating a zshenv with CVSROOT etc set).

    Next day I started a build, and after a couple of minor hitches (differences with FIND and RM, and PERL in the wrong place (bin not local/bin), I had a clean build. Took a little while, but by the end of the afternoon I had a ATG Dynamo server running our web applications....

    Amazingly simple. Everything just *WORKED*.

    My only problem is that Java based disk access is *VERY SLOW*.

    I did some basic benchmarks against my Toshiba Tecra (650 mhz). The Mac (450mhz) during Memory and CPU based processing ran about the same speed as the 650mhz.
    However disk access was twice as slow as the laptop -- anyone got any ideas ? Recall I installed on a pre-existing HFS+ disk that had OS9.1 on it. Can anyone recommend a disk tuning utility ? Should I rebuild from scratch with a different disk format?

    In Summary -- OS X 10.1 rocks if you want to use Java 1.3 in a Unix environment - project Builder looks sweet , though I haven't played with it. 2 easy days work and I had a new development environment. I think it took me a month or so with my Redhat 6.2 on that Tecra.

    All I want now is a Quartz/Carbon based Emacs :) oh yeah, that and a Titanium powerbook so I can trash that fscking Tecra :-)

    Winton

    • If you actually bought the 10.1 (X.i) disks, either the $130 new version or the $20 upgrade version, you should have a Dev tools CD. It's no different than what's on Apple's web site though.

      HFS+ is the fastest MOSX file format right now. With all those installs you may have fragmented one of the directory trees, either the catalog tree or the extents tree,especially if you went for the one partition setup. Installing CodeWarrior can also trash your catalog files.

      Try downloading the time limited demo of SpeedDisk from Symantec's site. If it doesn't make your G3 run faster, you aren't out anything. TechTools and a few others can also fix this problem but, IIRC, they don't have free demos.
    • All I want now is a Quartz/Carbon based Emacs :) oh yeah, that and a Titanium powerbook so I can trash that fscking Tecra :-)
      Ditto. XEmacs preferrably. Just to aggravate RMS you understand.

      You might want to look into picking up an iBook if you're not keen on dropping $2500-3500 on the Powerbook though. I've got the 500 MHz white iBook and it runs OS X 10.1 quite well. (In fact, I am pleased enough with 10.1's performance that I don't even have OS 9 installed on disk anymore.)

      You're not the only Unixhead who likes Macs, by the way... (-:

    • Thanks both of you! I'll check out Speed disk!

      As for the iBook -- Hmmm -- I found the keyboard/trackpad ergonomics kind of weird -- may be I should give it another go. The other thing wrong with it seems to be the underpowered graphics chip.

      I do like its weight/size though..

      Cheers,
      Winton

      • Unfortunately, all of the powerbooks with lift-up keyboards (I think that's all of them since the first g3 powerbook, and I know that it's all of them since the beige/translucent keyed g3pb) use the same itsy-bitsy laptop keyboard. Which makes sense, it's just far too tiny, and it means that all of the powerbooks have the same ergo problems. Even the current tiBook, which has a huge amount of real estate to work with, has this problem. For real use that isn't on the road, you'll probably want to get a full sized keyboard and mouse... Having said that, I sold my athlon 1gig to pay for my iBook, and it was the best computing choice I've made in ages. 3 cheers for being x86 free...

        itachi
    • A little late I am sure, but Apple generally doesn't install the fastest disks out there. You might try getting a newer disk that spins at some much higher RPM. IIRC, most mac disks are 7200RPM disks. If you have IDE in the B&W G3 (not sure, I know the G4's are IDE, but I can't recall G3 specs at the moment), get a 15k drive and use FWB's Harddisk Toolkit to set it up. Then it should be smoking fast.
    • "All I want now is a Quartz/Carbon based Emacs :) oh yeah, that and a Titanium powerbook so I can trash that fscking Tecra :-)"

      well, go on down to
      http://emacs-on-aqua.sourceforge.net/

      It looks promising.

  • I pulled a similar feat years ago on much lesser hardware and covered all three major OS's. Running on a PowerBook Duo 270c, which IIRC is a 68030 @ 25 MHz w/ 24 MB RAM and a 240 MB hard drive I ran:

    MacOS 7.5.5

    SoftPC w/ DOS 5 and Windows 3.x

    MachTen Unix

    I know others are able to similar things very easily, and on a variety of hardware and platforms. Multi-OS emulation is nothing interesting, really. The trick is to settle upon one operating system that does what you need it to and work with that.

    (And I'm sure somebody will be happy to point out the Linux is that OS. Good for you.)

  • For all the whiners asking why someone would do this, I'm rather glad he did. I've been holding off on installing Fink on my main machine pending some sort of horror story. Nice to see it works this cleanly. In fact, I just finished installing it on my iMac.

    (Not that I expect it to be a patch on the NetBSD package system, but it's a nice start, at least.)

    --saint
  • Actually I'm most nostalgic for a game that's so old, System 6 broke it! I blew many an hour in college playing Lunar Rescue on a Mac SE... it's on Macworld columnist Chris Breen's list of Top Ten Mac games of all time, and nothing before or since has gotten the adrenaline pumping as much.

    Does anyone else remember this game? Or better yet, does anyone know who the author was (so I can bug him to Carbonize it : ) or where I can download it for use with vMac [vmac.org]?

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