[RTTY] Using Windows Contesting Software on a Mac

[Kok Chen]

On Aug 16, 2007, at 11:10 AM, Peter Laws wrote:

> The current "hot" emulator is Parallels (http://www.parallels.com/).
> It runs a virtual machine onto which you load your favorite version of
> MS-Windows (a legal copy of course!).  No muss, no fuss.  It may
> support loading Linux distributions as well.


I'll throw in my two cents by offering some clarification.  There are  
really three distinct classes of products -- emulators,  
virtualization and dual-boot...


-- Emulators --

SoftWindows, SoftPC and VirtualPC are emulators that run on the old  
68000 and PowerPC machines.

SoftWindows was a Windows emulator (emulated Wind 3.1).   It took  
Windows system calls and cloned the functions.  So it not only  
emulated the x86 instruction set, it also emulated the Windows  
operating system.

SoftPC and VirtualPC are actually emulators of the PC hardware, they  
do not emulate Windows.  You actually install Windows for the  
emulator to run.  You can run Win95, Win2k, etc on them, also  
including various x86 based Linux distros.

(A couple of years ago, Microsoft bought the company that created  
VirtualPC and ported VirtualPC to run on x86 machines.  This allowed  
a WinNT computer to concurrently run WinXP, for example.)

Crossover, which is derived from the open sourced Wine project  
(http://www.winehq.org/) is a Window emulator but runs native code  
without translating machine code.  I.e., it emulates the Windows OS  
but does not have to emulate the machine code.

On Macs, the software emulators (whether they emulated Windows, or  
emulated the x86 hardware) run very slowly as you can imagine.  Each  
x86 instruction has to be interpreted into either a 6800 machine code  
or a PowerPC machine code, or, in the case of Wine and Crossover,  
"just" (HI HI) emulating the system calls.


-- Virtualization --

Software such as Parallels' "Desktop for Mac" and VMWare's "Fusion"  
are virtualization products and are completely different animals from  
emulators.  They neither emulate the machine code, nor do they  
emulate the Windows operating system.

These programs make use of hardware that supports virtual machines.   
Each virtual machine thinks it is running on real hardware.

Virtualization products do not translate code.  The current  
Macintoshes have Intel Core Duo processors in them and they support  
virtualization.  They present an interface that looks like a  
completely separate x86 PC and you can install different versions of  
Windows or different Linux distros into this virtual machine, as if  
you are installing them into a standalone x86 computer.

It is like having multiple computers but using a single monitor with  
picture-in-picture screens watching each virtual machine.  They can  
also be operated in "full screen" mode (such as the Coherence mode in  
Parallels "Desktop for Mac").  When you are in full screen mode, the  
display looks just like the screen of a Windows computer, except that  
with a single keystroke, you can switch to look a MacOS desktop  
instead.   You can operate two monitors and one displays the MacOS  
desktop wile the second monitor displays the Windows desktop.

The MacOS applications and Windows program can run concurrently.   
They don't even know that each other exists, except when they want to  
both access a sound card.


-- Dual Boot --

Boot Camp is yet another different animal altogether from the above  
two classes.  Boot Camp is really just a tool (with drivers, etc)  
that allows you to easily partition your hard drive, with Mac OS X on  
one partition of the hard drive and with Windows XP or Vista on a  
different partition on the hard drive, and it comes with a simple  
mechanism to boot into either partition when you restart the  
computer.  Many people who run Linux are already familiar with this  
process since a lot of them are already dual booting between Windows  
and Linux.

The more important thing about Boot Camp is that it provides the  
necessary Windows drivers for the built-in sound cards, built-in web  
cams, USB, Firewire, etc that comes with Macintoshes.

With BootCamp, you cannot run both OS at the same time, but only one  
OS at a time.   With emulation and virtualization, MacOS applications  
and Window programs can be executing side by side.

----

A modern Macintosh such an iMac is pretty much built using the same  
Core Duo Intel processors that modern Windows machine run on (if they  
are using Intel rather than AMD processors).

The MacPro, for example is an 8 core computer, made up of two 3.0 GHz  
Quad Core Intel Xeons.  The difference is that the modern Macs will  
run both Mac OS X and Windows, whereas you cannot run Mac OS X on a  
Core Duo machine that you buy from Dell or HP.

The next time you hear someone complain of not being able to do  
contests because they are using a Mac, just hit them on the head with  
a large hammer.  You won't be doing any more damage to an already non  
functional brain :-).


73
Chen, W7AY


P.S., there are actually are other programs  for Mac-to-Mac  
emulation.  "Classic" allows you to emulate MacOS 9 on a Mac OS X  
machine that runs a PowerPC processor.  "Rosetta" is a just-in-time  
interpreter that allows you to run Mac OS X programs that are written  
only for the PowerPC architecture to also run on the Intel architecture.