{"id":2280,"date":"2004-02-28T16:38:51","date_gmt":"2004-02-29T08:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/02\/29\/xbox2-g5and-virtual-pc\/"},"modified":"2019-12-09T16:34:43","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T00:34:43","slug":"xbox2-g5and-virtual-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/02\/28\/xbox2-g5and-virtual-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"XBox2, G5&#8230;and Virtual PC?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' 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00:28:09&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:11645,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.macnn.com\\\/news\\\/22758&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20251118164635\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.macnn.com\\\/news\\\/22758&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 18:03:25&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-07 00:28:06&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-07 00:28:06&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:11646,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/apple.slashdot.org\\\/article.pl?sid=02\\\/08\\\/31\\\/195208&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=179&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/apple.slashdot.org\\\/article.pl?sid=02\\\/08\\\/31\\\/195208&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:8131,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.lowendmac.com\\\/musings\\\/boxes.shtml&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20131015145540\\\/http:\\\/\\\/lowendmac.com\\\/musings\\\/boxes.shtml&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.lowendmac.com\\\/musings\\\/boxes.shtml&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-07 09:41:40&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-07 09:41:40&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.authenticgeek.net\/\" title=\"Authenticgeek\">Nick<\/a> just dropped me a quick note to let me know that I&#8217;m showing up on Slashdot again. It seems that word just hit the &#8216;net that Microsoft has released the SDK for the upcoming XBox2, and said SDK is being distributed running on Apple PowerMac G5 dual-processor machines running a customized NT kernel. This prompted <a href=\"http:\/\/games.slashdot.org\/comments.pl?sid=98693&amp;cid=8420814\" title=\"\/.: Almost...\">Mr. Muskrat&#8217;s comment<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Michael Hanscom almost blew the XBox2 story wide open back in October.<\/p>\n<p>  Remember when <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/10\/of_blogging_and.html\" title=\"Eclecticism: Of blogging and unemployment\">Microsoft fired that guy<\/a> because he <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/10\/even_microsoft_.html\" title=\"Eclecticism: Even Microsoft wants G5s\">mentioned that they bought G5s<\/a>. Too bad he didn&#8217;t know anything about why they bought them.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I did <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/11\/itll_never_happ.html\" title=\"Eclecticism: It'll never happen, but...\">wonder a bit<\/a> about the G5\/Xbox2 link back in November, when news first broke that the Xbox2 would likely be running on the G5 chip. At the time, I was idly wondering about the possibility of an Xbox emulator for the Mac (similar to Connectix&#8217; old Virtual Gamestation software that allowed Mac users to run Playstation games on their home computer).<\/p>\n<p>Now, though, the news that the seeded G5&#8217;s are running a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theinquirer.net\/?article=14407\" title=\"The Inquirer: Xbox 2 SDK released on cool Apple Power Mac G5s\">custom NT kernel<\/a> has me wondering along different lines.<\/p>\n<p>In February of &#8217;03, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.com.com\/2100-1001-985149.html\" title=\"CNET News: Microsoft buy to boost server efforts\">Microsoft bought Virtual PC<\/a>, the PC-emulation software for Macs that allows them to run Windows software inside an emulated PC. They&#8217;ve continued to support and update <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/mac\/products\/virtualpc\/virtualpc.aspx\" title=\"Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac\">Virtual PC for the Mac<\/a>, along with releasing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/windowsxp\/virtualpc\/\" title=\"Microsoft Virtual PC 2004\">Virtual PC for the PC<\/a>, allowing Windows machines to run multiple virtual machines on one physical box &#8212; handy for software testing purposes. Unfortunately, Virtual PC <a href=\"http:\/\/maccentral.macworld.com\/news\/2003\/08\/27\/virtualpc\/index.php?redirect=1078013763000\" title=\"MacCentral: Microsoft confirms Virtual PC not G5-compatible\">depends on a feature of earlier PowerPC processors<\/a> that is not present in the G5, so there hasn&#8217;t been a version of Virtual PC released yet that will run on Apple&#8217;s flagship G5 desktop machines.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Microsoft announced that a new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macnn.com\/news\/22758\" title=\"MacNN: Microsoft announces Virtual PC 7 with G5 support\">G5-compatible version of Virtual PC<\/a> would be released along with Office 2004. Considering that the Xbox2 SDK is apparently running a customized NT kernel that runs on G5 systems, could some of those same customizations be worked into Virtual PC 7, making for a <em>major<\/em> speed increase, as more of the low-level code would be running natively on the Mac rather than having to pass through an emulator? I don&#8217;t really know enough about the innards of how software like this works, so I could be entirely off-base here &#8212; the differences between the emulation required for Virtual PC and the customizations needed to get the NT kernel running on the PowerPC processor may have absolutely nothing in common &#8212; but it was enough to get me wondering.<\/p>\n<p>Even more interesting, though, would be if someone could leak some form of benchmarks, even rough ones, showing what kind of performance this customized NT kernel was getting on the SDK machines. I&#8217;m assuming it must be at least somewhat respectable, as the machines are being used for creating software for the Xbox2 &#8212; but <em>how<\/em> respectable?<\/p>\n<p>And going even more wildly out of the bounds of reality&#8230;for years now, there have been rumors of Apple <a href=\"http:\/\/apple.slashdot.org\/article.pl?sid=02\/08\/31\/195208&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=179\" title=\"\/.: Apple Secretly Maintaining x86 Port Of Mac OS X\">porting the Mac OS<\/a> to be able to run on Intel-based PCs (realistically, that&#8217;s not likely to ever be released publicly, but the technology is there). However, what about going the other direction? What if Microsoft were to take these customizations to their kernel and and eventually supplant Virtual PC with an actual build of Longhorn for the G5, either as a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lowendmac.com\/musings\/boxes.shtml\" title=\"Low End Mac: Red Box, Blue Box, Yellow Box\">red box<\/a>&#8221;  that would allow you to run Windows applications concurrently with Mac OS X applications (we can already run Mac OS X apps, &#8220;Classic&#8221; Mac OS apps, Unix command-line apps, and Unix X-11 apps all at the same time as it is), or as a dual-boot option (Which OS would you like to run today)?<\/p>\n<p>Likely? I seriously doubt it. But fun to play with.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;d still <em>love<\/em> to find out just how zippy those G5s are running NT. Wouldn&#8217;t it be a fun little tweak if they were running as fast as (or faster, even) than high-end PCs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Musings on Microsoft, XBoxes, and PowerPC Processors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043,2038],"tags":[460,118,114],"class_list":["post-2280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-tech","tag-15-minutes-of-fame","tag-apple","tag-microsoft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}