VirtualPC free from MS

[TinDragon]

Dont know how many of you know about this already but MS are giving away VirtualPC 2004 for free, I saw the post on blitzbasic.com. I haven't had a chance to set it up yet but it should allow running of old dos stuff via the emulation. This means we can hopefully view some of those classic Dos demos we cant view under winxp. Also from my limited experience with this type of thing it should also be possible to run linux under it so we can view any linux demos. The ont thing to note is that it emulates something like the old S3 graphics chip which isnt a super powerful gfx chip so I dont expect it can run recent hardware 3d demos under linux

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

[Ghost^BHT]

Thanks hope it works on stuff I haven't been able to see undr dosbox 

[.:] Druid [:.]

M$ plans to give its 2007 version for free as well.Ã,  
About the dos thingie: you have to install dos.Ã,  It's not an emulation, it's a virtual machine, that makes a huge difference.

Also, if you are interrested in virtual machines, you should have a look at vmware solution: beta 3 is free as well.Ã,  By far better.

[TinDragon]

Yes I maybe didnt make that clear, the program creates a virtual pc and as such requires the installation of an OS on the virtual PC's virtual harddrive, this can be any pc os from DOS to Winxp, OS2 to Linux. The program only emulates a set gfx chipset from what I understand but the virtual machines processor is based of the host machines cpu. Things like ram and harddrive sizes are configured per virtual PC so you could have multiple setups going if you felt like it 

[Shockwave]

I'm interested, there are a lot of very early dos demos that I'd like to run and indeed I'd like to have a go at coding one myself but I am concerned. Tell me, is there any way I could seriously fuck up my system by using this?

[.:] Druid [:.]

No, you can't.  The software creates a file on your hd.  This is the VM.  You run the software and it uses part of your system ressources to create a virtual machines. (could be server or workstation).  Once running, it access the created file because it's its HD.  Be sure you have some HD space (at least 4 gb).  If you ruin the vm, just reinstall it

[TinDragon]

Like druid said, you need a reasonable chunk of HD space and of course the old OS to install, I am going to try setting it up as an old win98 as i still have my discs for that and can use dos stuff as well. Only thing I am not sure of is how well it will like my Dual Core cpu 

[.:] Druid [:.]

I guess the software will only see one.

I'll need to have a look at m$ web site since there is also virtual server.  We had hosts running MS virtual servers 2005 at the office, we moved to vmware recently. (about 400 virtualized servers running on hp blades)

Now, it's not i'm having shares at vmware but if I remember well, it handles multi-processor systems. (the beta 3 I mean)

[Jim]

I've been using both Virtual Server 2005 R2 and VMWare Server recently.  They're both now free.  I've put Windows 2003 Server on to Virtual Server and it's brilliant.  But then I put Ubuntu on and it sucked.  I installed it on VMWare and it's superb.  I've also used SUSE on WMWare which is great too.

It's definitely possible to install DOS or Win95 on these machines as long as you have the original media - you can just mount a .iso file as a DVD drive.

There's no way to screw your PC either.  But beware the graphics can be pretty slow if the original program expects to use any hardware acceleration, although I expect that one day that will improve.  Watch out that Virtual Server drops the internet connection while it is installing, so if you're halfway through downloading Ubuntu like I was, you'll lose the download!

I reckon VMWare is the better product overall but the download is 145Mb where Virtual Server is only 29Mb.  Virtual Server is likely to be better for Microsoft OSs.  You need a MS Passport to get it.
http://www.vmware.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/default.mspx

Jim

[relsoft]

And you would need a very fast comp to get a decent emulation. :*(

[Jim]

It's not emulation, that's the clever bit.  All the instructions are being run directly on the CPU.  All that's happening is that at one level or another, the OS you install inside VMWare/VirtualServer is tricked into thinking there's real hardware there.  For instance today I put freedos on VMWare Server and I managed to get two of my old games working, and they run just fine, with just the mouse being a bit flakey.

I noticed also that the latest VMWare Server has some support for Direct3D8 applications - meaning they can take advantage of acceleration on your PC.

The whole idea with this technology is that a company with one physical server could run a number of different VMs on that one server, getting the best of all the worlds of all the OSs, for instance running Apache on Linux and SQL Server on Windows Server 2003.

Jim