WinXP on a Mac, Hoax? 390
Brill writes "Ars Technica is reporting that a member of the 'WinXP on Mac' forums called narf2006 may have succeeded at the impossible. He's submitted his solution to get XP on an Intel Mac, for the $12,000 prize, but for now the only proof available is a blurry Flickr collection of photos that could be faked with virtual PC. His reputation on the forums however is strong, and he's already calling for testers." We've had people write in to say this has been announced a hoax on the contest page. The contest page is, of course, down due to bandwidth reasons. Engadget's conversation about this announcement has several theories on how this may have been faked. What's the verdict? Real or Fake?
Re:Explain how? (Score:5, Informative)
Or such is my understanding, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:2, Informative)
That's great, but neither of those things are going to happen soon. darWINE needs a lot of work. VMWare/VirtualPC have made no announcement of OS X products. Unless someone has been secretly working on an OS X virtual machine product and is ready to release (it IS possible), we won't see that soon.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Informative)
I know a Mac is not for hardcore gamers but someone like me who wants to play the occasional game and not be tied into the pathetically small line-up for Mac games, dual-booting into Windows is a perfect solution.
But there's lots of other uses (most of which would work fine within a virtual machine), like company-supported apps that are not available for Windows.
Re:Verification? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:5, Informative)
640x480 (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting thought there - VGA drivers arent installed now if it was a fresh install right?
"
PowerMacChris says:
oh-oh-owned!
Windows XP has a 640x480 resoulition on GUI install
Posted 3 days ago.
Paul Stamatiou Pro User says:
^ No. I've installed XP with 1280x1024.
Posted 2 days ago.
digitalpiracy says:
No he's right - you can set an option in the unattend.sif file so the resolution jumps to whatever you like once its installed the VGA drivers, but this section always runs at 640x480
Posted 2 days ago. "
People who are far more likely to succeed... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This shot in particular (Score:4, Informative)
Re:If I sorted the bits (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, part of the contest rules was that you had to be the first to post the instructions to the onmac.net forums. For the sake of transparency, it's a good idea.
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:5, Informative)
I think you have that backwards.
Apple has said they don't care if you want to by their hardware and boot XP on it, feel free. They're not doing anything to stop it, but they are also not doing anything to enable it.
What they are against is Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.
- Tony
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:2, Informative)
As to the question, however, of why someone would want to install Windows directly, or "dual boot", here are some answers:
- Gaming. This is probably the primary reason. Since even virtual machine solutions typically still emulate some aspects of video, to get the full performance Windows still has to be running natively directly on the hardware.
- Best possible performance. For those who want Windows and their Windows applications to run as best as they possibly can, again, running Windows directly is required.
- A desire to run Windows (for whatever reason, whether it be preference, desire, necessity, etc.) on quality Apple hardware, while also having the option to run Mac OS X.
- Other applications for which direct hardware access is required.
- Becuase you can. No reason at all other than to "do it".
There are many other arguments for Apple's x86 transition being a potential trojan horse into environments that otherwise avoided Apple hardware because of requirements for Windows. Being able to run Windows in supported vm environments, such as VMware, could be a huge boon to Mac OS X/Apple adoption in certain sectors. The ability to directly boot Windows, even if officially unsupported by Apple, is also very attractive to some.
Hopefully this answers your questions.
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:4, Informative)
You guys are lame (Score:1, Informative)
All of you leachers calling this a hoax are super lame. Instead of wasting Internet bandwidth with stupid comments on Slashdot, try downloading Intel's EFI starter kit, and implement yourself. You don't even need a Mac, except to polish off the EFI boot environment; you can develop the entire BIOS emulation without a Mac.
I've been implementing a BIOS compatibility layer, and those photos are definitely legitimate; they show BIOS call traces.
I hope that he sells his solution. People making comments like this don't deserve the gracious effort of others.
Re:Is this really a first? (Score:2, Informative)
A year or two later this was revised to CHRP - Common Hardware Reference Platform
As pointed out elsewhere, these were not runaway successes. I don't believe Macs ever were fully compliant with either spec, on purpose I suppose.
Re:Is this really a first? (Score:3, Informative)
A year or two later this was revised to CHRP - Common Hardware Reference Platform
Parent is correct. CHRP [wikipedia.org] was a successor of PReP [wikipedia.org]. PReP was quite flawed from Apple's perspective, and while CHRP was better, probably only few boxes actually complied with it. Some of those that did were Motorola's StarMax Pro 6000s, running 233 [everymac.com] or 266 [everymac.com] MHz G3s.
Those systems were announced [com.com] at mid-1997, but they never shipped, as Apple decided to kill the clones. Some [macslash.org] are still using those few that were made, though.
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (RE: AC) (Score:3, Informative)
PRODAS [prodas.com] (Projectile Rocket and Ordinance Design and Analysis Software)
Don't know if you are trolling or serious, I am an aerospace engineer wrapping up my masters and I use this piece of software regularly to do 6DOF ballistics and trajectory modeling. There **are** no substitutes for a mac. Similar programs exist for radar modeling, etc. that have no Mac equivalent.
Besides the key apps that target a small but deep-pocketed audience (PRODAS license: $6000) (hence no motivation to port - small audiences, target 1 popular platform) you have gamers: a very large audience with smaller pocketbooks, but you have volume. Gamers want to customize their systems - they can't do that currently with a mac. Now with the move to Intel hardware, Apple has the chance to change that trend. We will see...
Video of Windows install on imac (Score:2, Informative)
Screenshot here [imageshack.us]
Video available here [nyud.net]
update from colin and narf2006 (Score:3, Informative)
According to Intel documentation [intel.com], using a CSM that plugs into the EFI framework should allow for booting BIOS-based operating systems:So far (to me at least), it looks like narf2006 (and his accomplice, blanka) might have truly done it.