Working computer/operating system mismatches?

[TheMelodyMaker]

Okay--I have absolutely no motivation or desire to try actually try doing this, but I'm just curious to know if it can be done. Would it be possible to get Windows (or even DOS) properly installed and running on a Macintosh, or the Mac OS properly installed and running on a PC? It's something I've never thought of before until today; and I figure that in theory it could possibly work.

I've seen other threads in which some rather heated PC/Mac discussions arise, but please understand that I have no intention of starting one of those. It's simply a question of curiosity.

If anyone has some intelligent answers, please post! If not, no big deal. ^_^

[Mithrandir]

Either way can work. Which way do you want? We'll give you 'intelligent' posts based on that.

FYI: I've got WinXP and Win98 installed on my G4 at work using Virtual PC and use it to test websites on 3 platforms/2 browsers without leaving my chair.

[andyroo]

Dunno. It would probably easier to do so with DOS (i.e. free DOS) and change source code to fit the machine. The only problem I would find is that OSs will usually have some sort of processor dependancy. I think an OS will try to take full advantage of the hardware platform it is using to make much faster and more stable. It may not have to be complete assembly, but maybe just C. That's my take on it.

[Straylight]

Either way can work.

Hmm, so does that mean there's a way of making macOS run on a PC? That'd be quite cool.

[Fsiphskilm]

I think you can get a MAC

[shooraijin]

It's probably easier to get Windows running on a Mac, than the reverse -- there just aren't that many PowerPC emulators. Of those that allow MacOS to run on an alternate host OS (usually Linux of some form), most of them do not have CPU emulation meaning you already need to be using a PowerPC (and most of those are, of course, Macintoshes already, except for a smattering of Pegasus boards and PowerPC-based Amigas).

As for Virtual PC, it's great. I already used it for Windows 98, and I just finished installing Windows 2000 on it over the weekend (sigh, had to install about a billion service packs also ...). However, I can't get Red Hat Linux 9 to work right on it; the X server, which I guess is XFree86, doesn't like the emulated S3 Trio64 video card. Before you ask why Red Hat (I asked that myself, I'd rather run NetBSD/i386), it's because the development system I'll be upgrading to offers a Linux cross-compile, but only supported on Red Hat and SuSE and I can get Red Hat .isos for free.

There is some work on porting WINE to Mac OS X, including the Bochs IA-32 emulator so it can run x86 objects (and presumably Windows Portable Executable-format objects) directly, but it looks like the development fork is standardizing on OS X Panther, which I won't upgrade this unit to. (I like Jaguar just fine.)

[shooraijin]

Also, there *are* several 68K Macintosh emulators for the PC, including Basilisk, but just try and find current titles that offer "fat" executables that will still run on older 68000-based systems. I write some now and then for my older machines, but few current applications still support them in this age of OS X.

[Mithrandir]

*shudders*

[shooraijin]

> I mean can't we all just program in multi-platform code???

RealBASIC already offers Windows and Macintosh cross-compilation from one central source repository (Professional version only, though), and will be supporting Linux (Red Hat and SuSE) in next year's 5.5 as another target. I don't know if this is just x86 or whether PPC objects will be possible too.

[madphilb]

I beta for Kaser Games.... EK (Everet Kaser, the owner/programmer/all around great guy) forged his own engine to build games in... literally he build something similar to Java for his games.

The idea being that the source code for engine itself is available to anyone who wants to port it somewhere else (he's already working on a Linux port, and an older version of his engine for the Mac).

In the end this will make his games accessable to anyone, as of right now he's already got customers who run his older games emulated on the Mac.

PHIL

[shooraijin]

> EK (Everet Kaser, the owner/programmer/all around great guy) forged his own engine to build games in... literally he build something similar to Java for his games.

Do you have a URL for Kaser Games? What sort of titles/genre do they write?

Back in "the day," Infocom created the Z-machine with just such a purpose in mind -- a machine-independent programming language for adventure games, and then just wrote lots of different interpreters. Infocom games ran on Apple II, Atari, TI 99/4A, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, MS-DOS, CP/M, DEC Rainbow, ... you name it, all one game with a different runtime library.

[madphilb]

Yeah.... http://www.kaser.com/

He writes Logic/Puzzle games (with a few other things thrown in). It's a bit of a nitche market, but he fills it well He formerly worked for HP before he switched over full time to game design.

EK is one of the few (if not only) people who took Logic Puzzles and gave them a graphical face. He's just wrapped up beta on a re-write of an older game and a variant of it. Really cool stuff.

The Z-machine is still alive and well with the IF community thanks to Inform (a Z-machine compiler).

PHIL

[shooraijin]

Oh, I love Inform. It's stellar and well-designed, not to mention all the new Z-machine ports it's led to. Play Infocom games on your Palm!

Incidentally, the link was not easy to find -- initially all I saw was something about, well, if you want to run this on a Mac, use Virtual PC! After a bit of digging, I came up with this.

http://www.kaser.com/kint.html

Intriguing.