Well, I can say it truly is a miracle. I never thought I would be able to install Mac OS X 10.3 on my supposedly “inferior” x86-based AMD machine. Well, for most of you mac-zealots, you were wrong. It actually does. And I’ve got the proof right here!
The installation was not really that hard; the PearPC website has done an excellent job in providing you with information. And, just days after the 0.1 release, websites all around the world posted howto’s and installation guides. I’m not going to explain how it is done in this article; that is not the purpose of this article. The purpose of this article is to simply show you that it can be done, and I will do this through a number of screenshots.
After generating .iso’s from the Mac OS X install disks, it is time to boot PearPC by issuing a simple “ppc config.txt” command. PPC itself does not really have a GUI (only the “change CD” button) so the first GUI stuff you’ll encounter is the Installer:
My hart actually skipped a beat; I never really thought it would work; not necessarily because I thought PearPC was vaporware, but more because my computer is getting kind of, well, old.
Of course everything was not running very snappy; on their website they warn you: the emulated processor is about 40 times slower than the host processor. Still, I was amazed at what I saw: it worked!
After a painstaking process of creating a bootable “harddisk” (grab a bootable .img file from the website; it saves you a lot of time), the installation started.
It took, in total, more than 5 hours. And that was just the first cd. Since I had nothing else to do (PearPC took 99% of my processor and all the RAM it could possibly find), I actually started to clean my bed/computer room. Thank you, PearPC.
After the installation of the first disk, PearPC had to be restarted with the harddisk image file as the master, and the second install disk as slave. This was a point of frustration; Mac OS X would not boot. Luckily, I was not the only one having this problem. It turned out that the installer put the Mac OS X partition in third, while it should be in second place. Again, take a look at the PearPC website, the solution is out there.
After the installation of the second disk was ready, I was finally able to boot into Mac OS X 10.3, Panther. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a very strange moment. I now know what all those people must have felt when they were abducted by aliens (not that I believe in those stories, but still).
Then, the big welcome:
Spotting the memory/processor usage:
Creating a user account:
And, finally: Enjoy your Apple computer!
Well, just when I was ready to start “Enjoying my Apple Computer”, a weird bug appeared: I was dropped into an infinite Finder crash-loop. Well, not really infinite, 15 minutes or so later, the loop ended. Mac OS X 10.3, Panther, was actually running on my Athlon machine!
The only glitch left was the Dock. It also encountered a crash loop, but this one was indeed infinite. I am confident that these problems will be resolved in later versions of PearPC.
Conclusion:
I am truly impressed. I do not really have anything more to say than: thank you, PearPC, for this, well, enlightened moment. And for my clean room, of course.
Test system:
– AMD Athlon XP 1600+;
– 512 MB SDRAM;
– Ati Radeon 9000 with 128 MB DDR-RAM;
– CMI-8738 based 5.1 soundcard;
– MSI K7T Turbo2 mainboard;
– 40 GB harddisk;
– Standard ps/2 keyboard;
– Microsoft Trackball Optical (USB);
– Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (host);
– PearPC 0.1, emulating Mac OS X 10.3 Panther (client).
About the Author:
Thom Holwerda is a regular visitor on OSNews.com and has contributed more than once. His first computer experience dates back to 1991 (a 286 entered the household). Over the years he has played around with several computers, but it wasn’t until 2001 that he really started to experiment OS-wise with computers. His favorite operating systems are Windows Server 2003, Mandrake Linux, BeOS. He also has an affinity for the QNX Neutrino RTOS. Thom also contributes to the SkyOS project, being responsible for the Dutch translation.
And if you chose to spend 800$, it would actually be useful.
However, at those speeds, why bother?
– Kelson
Interesting. I assume this what Enderle was talking about last week when he was at Intel?
I’m a PC/Linux partisan, but I’ve got to admit that if PearPC is as slow as the review makes it out, then Mac can emulate x86 better than x86 emulates Mac.
How does it works without Apple ROM ??
>Considering us lower forms of life (Mac users) apparently
>repulse him (as we are all zealots)
No i think he is just pointing at the mac zealots not mac users. Anyway i am very curious about the speed and preformance with f.i. indesign or distiller.
I will try and put Mac OSX on a PIV, thanks for the article Tom.
As some may know, the QEMU software can emulate PowerPC quite happily (and at good speed) and can run some PowerPC versions of Linux. They have people looking at the code so expect to see some Mac OS X support on that soon. A little competition can only be a good thing here ;o)
macs, just as sun’s, use OpenFirmware, which – as far as i know – is open and therefore most details are well-known, so it can be emulated.
Ya know, it could be that he doesn’t mean “zealot” offensively. Have you ever been called a nerd? Geek? Penguinista? Were you offended? I’m a Slack zealot. So there.
However, at those speeds, why bother?
This is a 0.1 version. Speed improvements will come. This was just a short overview, showing to everyone that it can be done.
I never said it was very useful right now, especially on my machine.
Anyone tried MacOS 9 ? That would run a lot faster, but then again, you lose the stability of OS X.
Ya know, it could be that he doesn’t mean “zealot” offensively.
Thank you
Saves me some explaining.
now most of you windows-zealots can run OS X.
…after more than 5 hours of installation you get crash loops on an emulation that don’t support AltiVec …have a lot of fun 😉 …till Apple puts a bolt on it.
“till Apple puts a bolt on it.”
That’s what I was thinking too. Somehow they’re going to throw a monkeywrench in the works..
> Anyone tried MacOS 9?
I guess this is just for informational purposes. 9 is deader than disco.
You actually bought Windows Server 2003 Enterprise to run on a home machine? And you bough Mac OS X to run on an emulator?
The Finder bug is fixed in the 0.1.1 release.
What kinda hardware would you need to run this at a usable spped? I’m guessing at least 2x Opteron 248 (the extra registers in x86-64 should help tons)with maybe between 2-4 GB of RAM?
If this is anywhere near true it’d be cheaper just to buy a mac (heh, when did you ever expect to hear that?!).
I guess if you needed to have a top of the line workstation but perfered osx for more casual things then this might useful.
but this is cool none-the-less.
The Finder bug is fixed in the 0.1.1 release.
I know, already installed 0.1.1. It does fix the problem
These are windows folks we’re talking about here, they’ll just download a pirated version
There’s this interesting concept you might be familiar with: friends.
“I’m a PC/Linux partisan, but I’ve got to admit that if PearPC is as slow as the review makes it out, then Mac can emulate x86 better than x86 emulates Mac.”
While I agree with that, PearPC runs OS X so slow because it doesn’t do altivec.
” How does it works without Apple ROM ??”
It’s been moved from a piece of hardware to a file recently.
“What kinda hardware would you need to run this at a usable spped? I’m guessing at least 2x Opteron 248 (the extra registers in x86-64 should help tons)with maybe between 2-4 GB of RAM?”
Until they get altivec down (hopefully for their sake they get it before altivec 2 is out) there isn’t hardware fast enough to make it run like it does on a PPC box.
>> These are windows folks we’re talking about here, they’ll just download a
>> pirated version
> There’s this interesting concept you might be familiar with: friends.
Yeah, see. That still falls into the “illegal” category.
I saw this a little while ago and was immediately impressed. I don’t have a PC to run it on but it looks oustanding. My only question is why the author actually goes out of his way to round of Mac zealots? All it really does is sort of encourage a flame war and makes he himself look like a PC zealot.
Yeah, see. That still falls into the “illegal” category.
Not necessarily…who says his friend is currently utilizing that copy of Mac OS X on another machine? I’ve received software from friends before that was perfectly legal to use.
How about not jumping to conclusions, mmm-kay?
Did I read this right?
All it really does is sort of encourage a flame war and makes he himself look like a PC zealot.
Uhm, I was joking. I said: “for most of you mac-zealots”. Did I say every Mac-user is a zealot? Uhm, I didn’t, did I? And, no, I’m no PC-zealot. I perfectly know well the pro’s/cons of having an open arch and a “closed” one.
Any processor can emulate another if you are not concerned about speed.
by sysinfo:
“O MHz PowerPC”
The article lacks meat, and not to mention it has a flame bait written all over it. Other than that good luck to the PearPC guys, though I don’t really see the purpose for such software.
I for one would like to be able to run OS X on my AMD machine because Windows XP sucks and Linux is too complicated for me.
I drool over OS X, but I enjoy working on PC hardware (cheap, easily to acquire, etc).
See, that’s a good reason.
Good article! I learned about PearPC through the article, and for that, I am grateful.
Now, for the article-crappers, (imagine hearing yourself hearing some cuss words.. just kidding).
I enjoy working on PC hardware (cheap, easily to acquire, etc).”
That’s why I like my Mac too.
x86 CPU’s are never going to be able to perform exceptionally at PowerPC emulation for one VERY SIMPLE reason… registers.
Even with AMD’s x86-64 specification the PowerPC specification has double the register allocation, and the standard IA32 x86 specification is an even worse comparison.
Without many many times the advantage in clock speed, x86 architecture CPU’s will have trouble emulating an architecture as register rich as the PowerPC.
Now that this works, we need a minimal Linux Distro that is just the minimum running to start this app up in full screen. That way, when you power your pc on, it will boot directly to OSX. Sure the boot process will take like 15 minutes, but this would be the best way to go.
Err… Humor? Familiar with the concept?
I know I’m no moderator but–
Let’s keep this on-topic, were discussing PearPC/PPC Emulation here, not my sense of humor.
I think the author is missing the point with his mac zealots comment. I prefer mac’s not because they are superior to PC’s, linux, or windows. But because of the user experience and the features a Mac has to offer. Not all mac users are zealots. Heck Windows XP is a good solid OS and so is Linux. I have all three running at home but I simply prefer m 17″ powerbook. Also why would anyone want to run OS-X on a PC? The point with getting a Mac is that they make the hardware and software. They integrate them well and lack the driver compatibility problems that somewhat is a pain on X86 platforms. Rather than having to support 100 kinds of sound cards they can support a few for their various hardware. It is the close integration of hardware / software that makes a Mac such a good product. However this can be somewhat emulated by certain PC manufacturers by testing testing and testing again their hardware combinations to make sure they all work together well.
My G3 iBook runs MacOS X at reasonable speeds without altivec. Sure, altivec emu would be great but its absence is not the reason for PearPCs current lack of speed.
I read that it currently achieves about 1/40th speed of the x86 system. The main developer hopes in time to get this to 1/10th speed. I am assuming me means in comparison to a stock G4.
Even with 1/10th speed, a 2Ghz machine would only equate to a 200Mhz G4 (and without altivec support at that).
Seems to me like this is never going to be fast enough for serious use (other than using a small application every now and then).
And the heathens shall burn in the cleansing applewood fire!
—
But seriously. Interesting.
(And as soon as it gets half way fast and useful, you know damn good and well what I’m doing to this machine at work.)
Oh, and Thom, keep tinkering with it. And then, when you start imagining what it runs like not emulated … eBay awaits you.
well, add that to the fact that you have to emulate a entire cpu arcitecture and you will see that stuff slows down fast. hell i cant realy get a good framerate on a GBA emulator on my 466mhz celeron
I agree, G3s run OS X just fine. I’ve got a 233Mhz G3 / 192MB imac and it runs 10.3 just fine, animation effects can slow it down but it’s useful enough for web/email/office work. My iBook is 600Mhz / 640MB and it is way faster but still lacks quartz extreme capabilities, yet OS X doesn’t slow down on that machine for anything. Of course I can choke that machine if I tried, but my MDD Dual 1ghz G4 / 1GB can take anything I throw at it. You can definitely tell that OS X really prefers the Altivec engine and lots and lots of RAM, but you don’t need it for it to perform at acceptable speeds.
Ha, I loved the article. You should have left out the zealot comment – too close to home for a lot of folks – apparently. The comments had me rolling with laughter, you pointed out that this wasn’t a deep article and yet the comments ask where’s da boef? Wish I had a OSX CD around to give this a shot. And for those folks complaining that it can’t be useful cause it’s soooo slow – VMWare was slow to begin with, but it’s much faster now – still not going to run at hosted speeds – emulation never does. I for one have yearned to give MAC a shot and the pearpc route is much more likely than me going out and buying an honest to goodness MAC.
Kudos.
“eBay awaits you.”
Hmmm, is there actually someone honest on Ebay selling Macs? I’ve heard way too many horror stories about that site, seen too many people get burned…
i wonder if the problem of registers would be alleviated if u used let’s say a dual opteron system? would that effectively give u twice the registers to play with? (i dunno im not an expert on programming, etc)…
congrats to PearPC, this is pure G33kware, and i love it. who cares if it’s useful or not, its just plain cool, and thats good enough for me. why do i constantly have to read about mac people justifying their purchases. just buy whatever computer u want.
oh and i dont wanna be a flamer, but its not the x86 thats unstable, its the programs. i don’t know about you, but the last thing i view nvidia as (nforce motherboard, video cards) is a company to release unstable hardware. there’s a beauty to every platform. and with x86 it’s cost, and u konw what? for 99% of the people out there, its all that matters. all they do is surf the web, check their email, and go on MSN, and they honestly dont care about the rest.
personally im more looking forward to outside companies making motherboard for ibm’s 970 chip and running OSX on that. im sorry apple charges too much, their profit margins are well known to be in the 20%+ range. they have the ability to lower prices, they just don’t want to, dont think otherwise… they are a company, looking for ur money, not to save ur soul.
It could also be useful for software developers to port, test or debug things on OSX. So all those whiny Mac users can use popular OSS in their native gui.
This is awesome news for me. I think Apple makes great hardware but never got into it because of the strangle-hold over the platform and the (past) lack of software. BTW, Emagic’s Logic 6 looks great.
Anyway, I need to convert some files to a format readable by Windows software. Until now, the only way I could have done this is by going out an renting a Mac.
Ummm
Great work. But…
In near future we will have a native OSX for x86
Oh my god, I want a mac! give me money!
Hey, I know I’d love to have MacOSX, but PearPC does emulate PPC hardware, thus you should be able to run “other” PPC OSes. I know i know… “we” the PC users love MacOS X and we brought WindowBlind and we use ObjectDock. But no matter what; we still want our mac.
Yes, I’m joking (but i’ll have my iBook). Anyway, remember that PearPC is not a MacOSX emulator. In fact linux for ppc seemed to perform better than osx according to the pearpc website. Has anyone tried that?
Cheers.
If you want a mac but can’t ‘afford it’ I am selling my 800mhz g3 iBook with 640mb of ram for $750 on ebay.
I spent a lot of time trying to emulate the mac on my PC and finally I just bought one! If you buy used on ebay like I did it is actually just as cheap as a PC. I have a new g4 ibook now and I love it and wouldn’t give it up for the world.. well I’d give it up for a g5 powerbook (one day
or, they could spend 50 more dollars on a G4 eMac that runs 35% faster clock speed and OS X runs 1000% better due to architectural advantages the G4 has over the G3.
It seems interesting that ThreeHits got modded down for being concerned about the use of the term ‘mac-zealots’ in this article, yet the statement “So all those whiny Mac users can use popular OSS in their native gui.” by Bryan is left happily unmodded down.
Seems like the moderator of this article is somewhat biased against their readership.
In near future we will have a native OSX for x86
Heh, keep tellng yourself that…
Have you ever tried to take your G4 eMac to class with you?
lol
“or, they could spend 50 more dollars on a G4 eMac that runs 35% faster clock speed and OS X runs 1000% better due to architectural advantages the G4 has over the G3.”
Not to mention G3 iBooks had a faulty logic board.
I’m not excited for G5 laptops. The G4 is a beautiful processor, the G5 is a feature filled toaster oven… IBM needs to cute the wattage down. Unless I’m wrong, I think it was running around 60 watts?
I wonder actually, how well the G5’s would do in an iMac casing, it might become a bit noisy. I suppose they could use some really nice fans.
how do you know the dock crash loop is infinite? 🙂
Hi, Thom.
As a Mac user since ’86 (and a usenet and UNIX user since ’82) I find this whole exercise interesting and fascinating.
This is, after all, only v0.1 of Pear, and even being able to get it to reasonably emulate a G3 on another architecture is fantastic.
Yeah, it’s not a G4 or G5, yeah, it’s a bit slow, uh-huh, there are a few problems, but it is still an amazing accomplishment and to be applauded.
Thanks for letting us know, Thom, and please keep us informed, eh? Good luck!
Thanks,
Tom
Being devoid of MacOS X owning-friends, any ideas were one could pick up a dirt cheap MacOS X cd.
That said, a eMac is < £550…
whether or not you are disparaging Mac users or Mac zealots, whether or not you think every Mac user is a Mac zealot, whether or not you are trying to be humorous or just sound foolish, the point is…
You are associating “Mac zealots” with an incorrect notion, one I have never even heard: that it is, and will always be, impossible to run OS X via emulation.
Making such a narrow and misguided claim is poor on your part for two reasons:
You are applying a stereotype and doing so inappropriately. As I said, I’ve never heard anyone make such a claim.
Secondly, your suggestion that these people are narrow-minded and misinformed actually suggest that it is you that are narrow-minded and misinformed.
My two cents.
Mac have better hardware by less cost than a PC.
Buying a PC by more cost than a Mac to run Mac OS X slow than a Mac is a thing only for PCdiots! 🙂
Sorry, but no, you are not getting the point. Nobody will buy a Dell machine to run OSX using PearPC. Your current cheap PC can be used to run OSX (although very slowly) using PearPC. And I will never buy that Apple hardware is cheaper than Intel/clon hardware.
as for the power required by g5’s (much lower now thanks to the 970FX)
Typical power at 2.0Ghz is 24.5W (vs. 51W for 970)
– Typical power at 1.4Ghz is 12.3W
Hi, Thom,
Very nice to read a review on PearPC on this site. I think you’d better add more text on this review.
Thank you a lot.
A fan of Mac Emu
I think miracle is a tad too much praise- but definitely a very cool thing, indeed, as it’s been said for a long time that the Mac op. sys. wouldn’t run on a PC. I have a friend who’s a total Mac-addict who would rub my nose in the fact that the Mac could emulate PC’s. I really didn’t care because I like my PC fine & can’t afford a new Mac (not what I’d want to have, at any rate). Not only that, but there are just so many other operating systems to try that run on the x86 platform. I suppose it’s more a matter of why you want to run a computer? I am truly obscessed w/learning & seeing more than just one system.
Anyhow, my two cents on the PearPC project is that they should (if they haven’t already) put together a hardware profile (ala Blackviper) & tutorial for people to set up when they plan to run the Mac emulator-
Mom ;^)
But damn did the zeolots come out of the wood work here! I’ve played with this myself on a similar system except my 1600+ is running at about 1.8Ghz right now with 1Gb of RAM. OSX isn’t really useable but then I have an iBook to work with it on.
The reason its significant is that it shows its possible. A proof of concept. Is it really useable right now? Well, no but look at the version number. 0.1. In its first release it actually can install, and run, an operating system that Apple says won’t work on anything else (which is BS…OpenDarwin).
Anyways, I figure by the time this software hits 1.0 (if Apple doesnt sue them out of existence) it should be useable in the speed department and by that time Opteron’s should be up to 3Ghz and Pent IV should be at about 4Ghz+…so I doubt Altvec extensions (which is BS anyways…you can run OSX 10.3 on a machine without it) make that much of a difference. The EMULATOR is the big slow down. Not the architecture itself.
Hmmm, is there actually someone honest on Ebay selling Macs? I’ve heard way too many horror stories about that site, seen too many people get burned…
I bought my Mac (an older CRT iMac) on EBay and didn’t have any problems at all – but as with any EBay auction, you need to pay attention and keep an eye out for suspicious behavior.
In my situation, the machine showed up with a couple pieces of the “case” broken and the seller went as far as sending me all the spare pieces he had around so I could fix it!
Darwin being the very foundation of OSX, and being open source and compilable for x86, isn’t possible to expect a futur project that will use native x86 executable for Darwin, and only emulate the remaining of OSX ? Which would give us a 50% emulated / 50% native MacOSX for PC ?
(sorry to anyone I blinded with this potentially BFOTO)
Can someone try running MorphOS in this emulator?
Has someone done it. Any links to the page?
no. it’s not that simple. you’re better off pouring your time into gnustep and making a linux port of carbon. then we can get os x software with a simple recompile. thankfully gnustep is already very feature complete. it’s carbon that *nix mostly lacks.
In near future we will have a native OSX for x86
Heh, keep tellng yourself that…
Uhm… ever hear of Project Marklar?
Google the term and be prepared to be amazed.
Not necessarily…who says his friend is currently utilizing that copy of Mac OS X on another machine? I’ve received software from friends before that was perfectly legal to use.
Yeah, except the OSX license agreement explicitly states it can only be run on Apple labeled computers. Bong, try again – this is a violation of the license.
You beat me to it. I was going to say the same thing.
If you want to get flamed, misunderstood or get peoples backs up, then write comments like these.
Why not just say, “It’s a miracle, I have seen Mac OS X running on a PC” or something like that. You won’t offend anyone, you are stating a fact and so forth. A mate of mine got OS X running on his PC the other day, and I helped him install it. Slow, but useable for a fun test, and yes, I was very amazed it worked as well as it did, but I have never though it couldn’t be done.
I’m a Mac Zealot, but as one, that doesn’t mean I don’t see the good things from other systems.
I really hope PearPC can get this product running at much greater speeds.
BTW, those that say they don’t understand why anyone would want to run OS X on a PC might first ponder wonder why anyone would want to buy Virtual PC then, maybe people on their PC’s (who don’t own a Mac) would love to run some Mac s/w perhaps?
why do AMD owner’s have such a Bug up their A** about Apple and OS X?
I’d like to know?
Look, you like cheap hardware, and if you’re not careful you will surely get it with Via motherboards and an AMD chip.
We, mac users want to get the Job Done.
We want the least trouble, highest reliability OS/Hardware combo on the market. We want a trouble free life to enjoy our computers without the hassle of undebugged, unmanaged or reviewed software: Microsoft, and exceptional hardware innovations, like the 17inch Powerbook from Apple.
We have different aims. I’m happy for you if you love your AMD machine.
Next article leave the insults in the clipboard.
http://nifty.org/nifty/gay/sf-fantasy/apprentices-better-half.html
(All text link, nothing bad will happen)
Important piece was a little part of a disclaimer that read: “Kiddies, read your Bible like mom and dad say, or you’ll burn in Hell like me.”
In context, it’s speaking to minors saying don’t read under 18.
Out of context, it really annoyed someone.
The next chapter heading has an apology on the top.
___
That said, nice geekwork on PearPC. Now, what I want to find out is if it will run 7.5.5 without crashing more than it did on my old 601s in the lab.
– Dos applications that used to be crying slow can be run at psychotic speeds on modern hardware, not to mention Windows 3.1.
Imagine in 5-10 years, this kind of emulation might be profitable as someone has a legacy app they want to keep without the old computer lying around.
Perhaps Apple moves to a new core and old compatibility is left out.
Emulation is a worthy goal, even if right now it seems a little amusing to watch an install take 5 hours.
…OS X runs on Wintel. Incredible feat. Absolutely unbelievable. Wonderful. It really is, and there’s no sarcasm in that statement.
However…
Why not just buy a Mac? Do all of you honestly not have enough money to spend for the real thing? You’ll spend thousands on graphics cards and Ethernet cards, and game controllers and speakers and new cases, but you really don’t have enough to get an iMac or iBook? They’re really decent, I tell you!
Have you thought that if Apple loses hardware sales you’re likely contributing to their death, and you’ll be stuck with Windoze forever? And, Microsoft will have no one to copy.
It’s like taking the dashboard and seats out of a BMW and putting it in a Camry. Still not a BMW, is it?
>>We, mac users want to get the Job Done.
We want the least trouble, highest reliability OS/Hardware combo on the market. We want a trouble free life to enjoy our computers without the hassle of undebugged, unmanaged or reviewed software: Microsoft, and exceptional hardware innovations, like the 17inch Powerbook from Apple. <<
oh please, u imply pc users don;t want to get the job done? so basically the whole 3d insustry which is slowly migrating to linux aparently dont know a think about getting the job done? the fact that google uses “cheap pc’s” to run the biggest search engine on the web, ur right, why would a cheapo pc do that?
listen, blame the OS not the hardware, i’ll give apple credit, the quartz layer on osx is nice n all, and i love their design philosophies (of their SOFTWARE). but the fact of the matter is, that the big iron, the machines that do the WORK, are moving towards linux.
the only market apple has is the creative market, film. and they’re holding on the the LAST niches they got left. and i say nice, cause its the only thing apple’s good at selling anything to.
-peace.
In the last screenshot, clocks in Windows and the Mac window show different times. I thought it would be fair to assume emulator would use the hardware’s clock.
Strange, to say the least.
This is a *geek* project.
Noone is going to run this seriously. Not now, not in a year, unless they’re doing development against the PPC and don’t need the speed.
(PS – as far as being able to afford a Mac, I can put 3000 bucks toward one and still not be able to play FFXI on it. No thanks.
Speedups will come in time!
I have a mac and a PC, so I’m not concerned, but I’ve got to be honest. It’s impressive for a initial release.
GJC
Hmm… it’s just for the “cool” “geek” factor that I am interested in this. Also, I think OSX Quartz looks damn cool.
But then, I am running an el cheap computer that I salvaged for about $300 (AMD Applebred 1.8Ghz overclocked to 2 Ghz, 512M RAM, 160 Gig WD HD, 52X Benq CDRW, Free after rebate Soyo motherboard, ATI 9100 Video card). Yes, all for $300 or less! Also, I got a 19inch monitor that I got for $40!
How did I do that? I am a proud Fatwalleter (fatwallet.com/forums).
Now only if Linux was easier to use and got something like Quartz!
…because that is incredibly boring.
Maybe he doesn’t wanna buy a Mac? Maybe he just doesn’t really even care? Maybe he wants to play Solatire in the background while Mac OSX boots up?
Damn, man; you gotta go somewhere to do something in this day and edge. Proof-of-concept projects rock, you and I know it, man, or you wouldn’t have the sweet sweet loving that is the OS X!
“Well, for most of you mac-zealots, you were wrong. It actually does. And I’ve got the proof right here!”
First i don’t see the need to say that mac users are mac-zealots, that’s stupid and remove credibility to this article.
And second i don’t see what is surprising here. It is not the first time that an emulator can run MacOsX on x86 hardware. Mac-On-Linux can do it wih Linux, so why not with Windows? I don’t understand why the author is saying that mac users were wrong, wrong about what? Again its not the first time that Osx is emulated on pc……
The author should be more aware about what is going on in the computing market, and not give some wrong statement about mac emulation on pc and about mac users…..
Instead of going for emulating the powerPC in x86 with slower results, it is high time that someone initiate a project like pearPC to create an open source virtual emulator like win4lin (netraverse.com) or VMWare (vmware.com) and better than WINE (for Linux machines). Anyone listerning?! Thanks!
Mac on Linux allows you to run OS X over Linux under a PPC processor. Its not like this, which emulates the instruction set.
Actually, MOL will only run on PowerPC systems — such as the Macintosh, Pegasos, or Amiga. That is because MOL is not an emulator. It is a virtual machine, so you will get near native speeds rather than the 40x decrease in performance which PearOS people are claiming.
“Until they get altivec down (hopefully for their sake they get it before altivec 2 is out) there isn’t hardware fast enough to make it run like it does on a PPC box.”
G3’s don’t have Altivec and they run it just fine.
Instead of going for emulating the powerPC in x86 with slower results, it is high time that someone initiate a project like pearPC to create an open source virtual emulator like win4lin (netraverse.com) or VMWare (vmware.com) and better than WINE (for Linux machines). Anyone listerning?! Thanks!
Go check out Darwine on the OpenDarwin page. They’ve gotten the WINELIB to compile on PPC so that programs with the Windows source code available can be compiled to run as PPC on Darwin/OSX. The project maintainers are currently working on trying to integrate the x86 emulation from QEMU into it so that closed source programs can be run, albeit slower due to emulation.
I can’t imagine a more wasteful effort. Emulating a Mac so you can run MacOS X on a PC at… um… such a slow speed, you could watch grass grow faster? *yawn*
I mean, I paid about $300 for a G3 B&W/350. It ran Jaguar decently and Panther even better. I sold my G3 and upgraded to a 466Mhz G4 DA for about the same price. And with a ATI Radeon Mac Edition, it all totally rocks…
Emulation serves the purpose of saving old arcade games from obscurity (MAME) and running morer popular apps on an OS that is more widely known and accepted (Virtual PC), but it seems totally pointless to emulate hardware that is going to run SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much slower than the actual hardware it’s emulating, it’s absolutely 110% useless to even run!
Just my $0.02 worth…
Luposian
Now if anyone in here had a real life u might notice that this is something fun to do….i don’t suppose that you have the ability to right a huge fricken code that runs a completely oppositley designed hardware OS on a PC, cause if u could please tell me… i’de love to hear how u did it. I find this interesting that someone actaully was talented enough to do this and was cool enough to release it for free. and if you havent noticed, the creator decided to use the decimal system,a nd version .1 is actaully a small number, small number = lot’s of bugs. Just look at Microsoft for that example
-peace out
the only market apple has is the creative market, film.
I just bought my first mac, a Powerbook. Am I an artsy type? Nope. I’m a computer scientist. An easy to use well integrated UNIX system is exactly what a lot of people like me would like.
I suspect Apple is making continual gains in my area and especially with laptops. Laptops are expensive in general, and I’ve never used a laptop as well built as the Powerbook in terms of integration and attention to detail.
As for the machines that crunch, sure that’s not Apple’s game really. But I think the poster was referring to workstations, as in a computer that people use on their desktop to ‘get work done’. He was alluding to the fact that OS X is easier to use for a lot of stuff and hence you can spend less time futzing with your computer and more time using with OS X.
Personally, people could probably ‘get work done’ with pretty crappy UI’s, but using an Apple sure is a lot easier and more enjoyble for me.
my 2 cents
“Why not just buy a Mac? Do all of you honestly not have enough money to spend for the real thing?”
Yeah you sure don’t get it 🙂 I don’t care about Apple. I get my work done with my Windows, my MS Office, my Visual Studio. All my favorites games are on Windows.
Yet, if I can play around with OSX, say few minutes à month, just for the kick, without having to pay for a second computer just for those few minutes of exploration, I’d be more than happy.
People try to emulate OSX on x86, not because they want to work with it, just to play, on the side.
“I can’t imagine a more wasteful effort. Emulating a Mac so you can run MacOS X on a PC at… um… such a slow speed, you could watch grass grow faster? *yawn*”
Have you paid attention to the version number? Its really just a first draft of an emulator. The fact that it’s even working at this stage of development is mind blowing.
Do you expect a baby to play soccer right away? Let him do his first steps. Then with a little work and patience, who knows how good he can be ?
As a Mac user, I have to say that this is fun. But it won’t be useful. All of the Mac applications only available on the Mac, need a decent amount of speed to function in a useful way. Imagine using Garageband. Whew.
Even now, Virtual PC is only at a quarter speed! This is after years of development-Ver. 6.1! Microsoft says that it’s solved some of the video problems by natively using the video card, and somehow, DirectX. Well, we’ll see. They are, as usual, six months behind.
As for emulating Altivec. Think about this very carefully. Emulation is very slow. We also have small endian and big endian to deal with. Altivec is a VERY fast vector processor. 128 bit bandwidth. Emulating this will not serve any purpose. Not only that, but it will slow the whole process down by another order of magnitude (at least). You can’t effectively emulate a hardware process designed to speed up operations otherwise done in software, or on a standard floating point unit, with software. That’s running in circles.
A G3 is a good choice for emulation, if that’s what they are doing. I would like to see this actually work. It seems that at this point that it really doesn’t. At the very least, you have to get past the boot, and be able to mouse around, open the app. folder look around, use terminal, etc.
Let’s look again in 12 months.
Nice post. I’m in complete agreement.
Currently PearPC looks like fun for hardcore OS enthusiasts only — all very cool and fine, that’s a good part of the audience for this site, and playing with all OSen should be everyone’s right. ; )
But that’s a far cry from a RW, usable version of the mythical “OS X on x86”, so be ready to be excruciatingly patient…. and take it with a big chunk of salt.
I’m trying it out, but all I get is “Panic: We’ll hang here” or something like that — I get this when trying to load up Darwin PPC on it — If I can’t get darwin to go and to partition, there’s no point in even thinking about buying OS X.
The emulation of altivec would likely never be as fast as originally made.If the emulator used cached just in time byte code PPC -> x86 conversion like the way .net or java works, then as we can see by benchmarking some java v’s c code that the performance hits can be minmised and useable.
If someone wanted to and used , pre caching just in time byte code translation .. osx could run on a pc useuably and perhaps even faster than a powerpc.
40x slower = unusable toy. I’d rather play with MOL on Pegasos. 😉
you’re better off pouring your time into gnustep and making a linux port of carbon. then we can get os x software with a simple recompile. thankfully gnustep is already very feature complete. it’s carbon that *nix mostly lacks.
I’m glad to see someone else mention gnustep. with all the interest in OSX on x86 I’m continually surprised more people aren’t familiar with gnustep as an option. WindowMaker alone has been my environment of choice on bsd and linux for years. It just feels much more refined than kde or gnome imo and the development environment is outstanding. But then again I’m a NeXT zealot.
Don’t get me wrong, as a coder monkey I absolutely love OSX and my macs, but if you want OSX on intel for functional reasons rather than all the “lickable” elements of Aqua, I personally think gnustep is about as close as you’re going to get at the moment.
1) PearPC does feature a JIT compiler and the announced performance is 1/40 of native speed, not 1/40 in terms of MHz AFAIK. You need other benchmarks, preferably those you can stopwatch to check reported timings. The major drawback right now is MMU emulation.
2) As for AltiVec emulation, depending on the type of application it can be reasonably fast. e.g. with a simple JIT engine, SheepShaver does perform at around half the speed of a PBG4/400 on an Opteron at 1.8 GHz for the Altivec Fractal Carbon program. Of course, the Altivec ISA is much richer than SSE, so this type of performance indeed can’t be matched all the time… And actually, this represents the best case with AFC. 😉
It is funny, PC users always say that Mac suxe but when MacosX is able to run on PC, they enjoy it…
Think about
It is funny, PC users always say that Mac suxe but when MacosX is able to run on PC, they enjoy it…
Err, I never said Mac “suxe”… Quite the contrary, when I have the spare money (which I haven’t, since I’m a student, and that means in the Netherlands that you do not have money to burn) I’ll definitely buy one. And hear: I’m not saying a Mac is expensive.
I thought about it, and y’know, your comment still doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t speak about you, but about the PC community in general
Great pics Thom. This is indeed a fascinating development. I myself have longed to see something like this for a long time. I look forward to the future development of PearPC, may it progress rapidly.
I also hope that some of the folks from Bochs and QEMU can collaboratively work with the folks at PearPC-there is a lot of knowledge between these developers. As someone already suggested it might be possible to use a native x86 Darwin in combination with this-of course I don’t know whats involved in something like this, but it should be possible to isolated what system calls OS X makes to the kernel and cross map these to the Linux kernel-ie provide a virtual machine for Darwin and let OS X. It may be that the fact that most OS X are propietary may actuall prevent such from being usefull-don’t know, and then of course there is the endianness issue. Perhaps if UserModeLinux could run a ppc kernel under X86 we might see Mac-On-Linux running this way….
It is just a shame that this article had to lure all of the whackos out of the woodwork….
why working so long to emulate macosx instead of buy a mac?
Mac are expensive (less now the laptop have been updated), but working on a emulator have a cost to, and I don’t know if working a lot of time is less expensive than buying a mac.