[CharlesS]

Yes, folks, it's finally happened! Now there is a free Intel emulator for OS X that isn't bochs!

http://stegefin.free.fr/qemu/qemu.dmg

I've tried it on my machine with FreeDOS, and it seems to work. Elsewhere on the Web, people are reporting that Windows XP works with it, and that it even has networking! What's more, I suppose that you could install Linux and WINE on it, and run Windows apps for free!

This is a big milestone for these guys:

http://darwine.opendarwin.org

since it basically means that their two components, WINE and QEMU, are ported and working. Now they only need to integrate the two!

This is going to be awesome.

[Sven G]

Another very cool thing is that you can download ready-to-use disk images for QEMU at FreeOSZoo (haven't tried it yet, however): all in all, very promising indeed!

[Millennium]

I'm still skeptical of Darwine's technical feasibility; getting their idea to actually work will be nothing short of miraculous, pretty much on the level of porting Quake to the Commodore Amiga. Then again, Quake was ported over eventually; perhaps this will be too. However, I'm not prepared to bet on it.

This said, another emulator is always a Good Thing. I'll be checking this one out. Any word on how well it runs? Come to think of it, how well does BeOS run in it? That's more a curiosity of mine than anything else, but hey; it'd be interesting.

[Millennium]

Another thing: does it, by any chance, support VirtualPC disk images? I haven't used VPC in a long time, but I've still got hard drive images back from when I used VPC 3.0, and it would be neat to get them running again. If it doesn't support them directly, is there a way to convert?

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Another thing: does it, by any chance, support VirtualPC disk images? I haven't used VPC in a long time, but I've still got hard drive images back from when I used VPC 3.0, and it would be neat to get them running again. If it doesn't support them directly, is there a way to convert?

It may support VPC 3 images, it doesn't support the new style images that 5 and 6 make though, even if they're flattened.

[Chuckit]

Well. I tried using the ReactOS disk image on the FreeOSZoo site (since that's the only GUIed OS that seems to come in a decent size), but it crashes before it finishes starting up. And QEMU refuses to start using the default network stack.

Oh well, that's pretty impressive that they've got it to work at all. I want to try comparing the speed to Bochs.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
It may support VPC 3 images, it doesn't support the new style images that 5 and 6 make though, even if they're flattened.

For the record, it at least starts booting, but I'm showing some kind of protection error in the FSHARE32 driver (this is a Win95 launch). I think that's a VPC-specific thing anyway, but I'm not sure how to uninstall it. I can boot into Safe Mode though.

[VEGAN]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Yes, folks, it's finally happened! Now there is a free Intel emulator for OS X that isn't bochs!

http://stegefin.free.fr/qemu/qemu.dmg

I've tried it on my machine with FreeDOS, and it seems to work. Elsewhere on the Web, people are reporting that Windows XP works with it, and that it even has networking! What's more, I suppose that you could install Linux and WINE on it, and run Windows apps for free!

This is a big milestone for these guys:

http://darwine.opendarwin.org

since it basically means that their two components, WINE and QEMU, are ported and working. Now they only need to integrate the two!

This is going to be awesome.

I've tried the NetBSD and it worked too!
This is wicked!
I still need to test it more, but it looks awesome!

[blackbird_1.0]

Can MS shut this down, too? Like they did with VPC and RealPC?

One more question: Where does it install at? I can't find it in any of my Application folders, but thee is a .pkg receipt for it.

[VEGAN]

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
Can MS shut this down, too? Like they did with VPC and RealPC?

One more question: Where does it install at? I can't find it in any of my Application folders, but thee is a .pkg receipt for it.

When you use Apple Installer, there is an option under File I think "show files" and it tells you which files and where they are installed. In this case the files are installed in "/usr/local" [and subfolders in there]

[Millennium]

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
Can MS shut this down, too? Like they did with VPC and RealPC?

Probably not. They were only able to shut down VPC because they bought it, and they didn't shut down RealPC; it died for other reasons.

NOTE TO VPC CONVERTS:

If you boot from a VPC image, your system will have trouble reading ISO images. To get around this, you need the OS install CD. Of course, since you can't use an ISO image of it (because the VPC Windows install won't work with it), you have to use the native CD-ROM support. This is tricky, and requires some Terminal hackery (among other things, you must run QEMU under sudo to make this work, but you only have to do it once).. I'll post instructions later on; I'm still figuring out exactly how it all works.

[madmacgames]

has anyone ran winXP on this yet? what is the performance like compared to VPC 6?

[saltines17]

If I have a Windows 98 SE disc, how do I get that to install on this emulator?

I got DOS to run from the freedos image, but now I'm very confused.

[KraziKid]

Millennium (or anyone that knows), how does the speed compare to that of VPC 6? Is it faster, slower, or just about the same?

[Millennium]

Originally posted by KraziKid:
Millennium (or anyone that knows), how does the speed compare to that of VPC 6? Is it faster, slower, or just about the same?

I don't have any experience with VPC6; the last version I used is 3, and then only with Win95. I'm trying to get back into this, though.

That said, its speed with Win95 seems decent enough, though actually running Win95 on a converted image has proven to be quite a trying task. I've ironed out most of the issues with a basic image, but I haven't been able to install onto a blank image yet. It doesn't seem to want to boot off of a Win95 disk.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Heh...the questions still remain; will we ever see VPC7, will VPC7 work on teh G5, will it really use the videocard instead of emulating one?

If the answers are: no, no, no. Qemu wins.
If the answers are: yes, no, no. Qemu wins.
If the answers are: yes, yes, no. It might be a tie.
If the answers are: yes, yes, yes. Then maybe VPC7 might have a chance to sell really well.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
One more question: Where does it install at? I can't find it in any of my Application folders, but thee is a .pkg receipt for it.

At this point, there is no GUI for Qemu; it is strictly a command-line app. It installs into /usr/local/bin, but the only GUI it has at all is the window that actually displays stuff. It keeps a "monitor" going in the Terminal, which you can use to interact with stuff (working with CDs and such), but that's as far as the GUI goes for now.

By far the most annoying thing, though, is that you cannot get it to use the actual CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive unless you run it as root, and even then it takes some rather interesting finagling with the Terminal because you have to unmount the disc without ejecting it. This stuff is easy enough to do with sudo if you know what you're doing (sorry, root-login fans, but even this doesn't require a root login), but it is still a massive pain.

Final verdict: This is an extremely rough port, and is by no means recommended for everyday use yet. However, if you're some kind of psycho-masochist-uber-power-user, you'll have a blast. I have, anyway.

Things I've noticed so far:

Windows: It seems to get the job done, though networking and audio are proving bothersome.

FreeDOS: Well, it boots. Doesn't do much else, because it seems to only be able to work right with the boot drive, but perhaps that's just DOS for you?

ReactOS: Frickin S-L-O-W. Don't touch this one yet; I suspect something is wrong with the support.

BeOS: It acts as though running on an unsupported graphics card, so everything after the bootup screen is greyscale.

Linux: Haven't tried yet.

Any of the BSDs: Haven't tried yet.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Heh...the questions still remain; will we ever see VPC7, will VPC7 work on teh G5, will it really use the videocard instead of emulating one?

If the answers are: no, no, no. Qemu wins.
If the answers are: yes, no, no. Qemu wins.
If the answers are: yes, yes, no. It might be a tie.
If the answers are: yes, yes, yes. Then maybe VPC7 might have a chance to sell really well.

If we actually see VPC7, it will almost certainly use the video card natively. Microsoft already has some source code for this, assuming that Connectix kept their archives from the VPC3 release, which allowed a Voodoo2 card to be used natively. I tried this back in The Day, and it worked reasonably well as far as it goes.

However, be forewarned: native graphics-card support is not all it's cracked up to be. No matter how good a graphics card is, it can't help a computer which is too slow to feed the card data as quickly as it can be processed. If you try, you'll get very pretty graphics but the framerate will be awful. This was an issue with the first 3dfx cards for Macs way back in the clone era, and that went double for anything running through VPC; let's just say that the FF8 demo on the fastest G3 available at the time was not a pleasant experience. Very pretty, but the framerate could have been measured in seconds per frame, rather than the usual frames per second.

This will probably still be true with most games, even on the fastest G5s; you might be able to run Quake 1 at a decent framerate (though why would you want to, given that there's a native port?) but don't expect much from anything more recent than that.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Millennium:
If we actually see VPC7, it will almost certainly use the video card natively. Microsoft already has some source code for this, assuming that Connectix kept their archives from the VPC3 release, which allowed a Voodoo2 card to be used natively. I tried this back in The Day, and it worked reasonably well as far as it goes.

However, be forewarned: native graphics-card support is not all it's cracked up to be. No matter how good a graphics card is, it can't help a computer which is too slow to feed the card data as quickly as it can be processed. If you try, you'll get very pretty graphics but the framerate will be awful. This was an issue with the first 3dfx cards for Macs way back in the clone era, and that went double for anything running through VPC; let's just say that the FF8 demo on the fastest G3 available at the time was not a pleasant experience. Very pretty, but the framerate could have been measured in seconds per frame, rather than the usual frames per second.

This will probably still be true with most games, even on the fastest G5s; you might be able to run Quake 1 at a decent framerate (though why would you want to, given that there's a native port?) but don't expect much from anything more recent than that.

Actually I do expect more. Quake 1 ran ok with the Voodoo 2. I'm pretty sure a G5 and any optimizations to VPC that take advantage of the G5 will allow VPC to send data fast enough to video card and crunch everything fast enough to emulate late 1990s games and early 2000 games really well.

I think it's not unreasonable to believe Half Life will run really well on a G5.

[codywalton]

This looks really interesting. I want to try it out. I downloaded the QEMU installer and the FreeDOS intstaller, but I'm not sure how to use them. Could someone post a quick "how to" for us who are not terminal proficent. Kind of a "QEMU for Dummies".

[kupan787]

I see that the installer installs QEMU 0.5.5, but there is a version 0.6 on the main site (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu) One of the things it mentions is the following:

PCI and Cirrus Logic GD5446 VGA adapter support.

So I am guessing that this isn't in the 0.5.5 release we have. What is odd is that the readme that comes with QEMU for mac says:

Then you can launch qemu in a Terminal window:

$ /usr/local/bin/qemu -hda image_name.img -boot c -m 128 -cirrus-vga -user-net

But if you try and use the -cirrus-vga option, QEMU complains. So it is as if the readme was written for version 0.6, but instead what was packaged was 0.5.5. I wonder if this new "dummy vga" will speed up graphics at all. I have been tryign to install XP, but whenever it boots into the graphical part of the installation, I gt a fatal error inside of windows and I have to quit the setup program.

[blackbird_1.0]

Thanks, VEGAN and Millenium.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by kupan787:
I see that the installer installs QEMU 0.5.5, but there is a version 0.6 on the main site (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu) One of the things it mentions is the following:



So I am guessing that this isn't in the 0.5.5 release we have. What is odd is that the readme that comes with QEMU for mac says:



But if you try and use the -cirrus-vga option, QEMU complains. So it is as if the readme was written for version 0.6, but instead what was packaged was 0.5.5. I wonder if this new "dummy vga" will speed up graphics at all. I have been tryign to install XP, but whenever it boots into the graphical part of the installation, I gt a fatal error inside of windows and I have to quit the setup program.

My usual startup parameters are

>qemu -hda HD.img -boot c -cirrusvga -m 128

Seems to run Win 95 pretty well, except that I can't get the -user-net option to connect me to the net.

[Millennium]

A good frontend for this would be much appreciated. The large number of CLI parameters is already getting rather cumbersome, particularly is you switch between operating systems often, as I do. I've taken to wrapping up the CLI calls into small one-line shell scripts, but a nice clean GUI could do Great Things here.

This is one of those times I've really wished for native Tk support, because this is a perfect candidate for automation via expect and a Tk-based GUI would work well as a cross-platform deal. Am I going to have to finally learn Cocoa?

[Tick]

Originally posted by Millennium:
I'm still skeptical of Darwine's technical feasibility; getting their idea to actually work will be nothing short of miraculous, pretty much on the level of porting Quake to the Commodore Amiga. Then again, Quake was ported over eventually; perhaps this will be too. However, I'm not prepared to bet on it.

This said, another emulator is always a Good Thing. I'll be checking this one out. Any word on how well it runs? Come to think of it, how well does BeOS run in it? That's more a curiosity of mine than anything else, but hey; it'd be interesting.

But notepad.exe is so pretty in x11 on os x

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by Tick:
But notepad.exe is so pretty in x11 on os x

Apple's TextEdit doesn't do it for or something?

[Tick]

Originally posted by madmacgames:
Apple's TextEdit doesn't do it for or something?

It was a joke.. but textedit in 10.3 doesn't have a option for plaintext when saving, so no


see all the way though

[Synotic]

Originally posted by Tick:
It was a joke.. but textedit in 10.3 doesn't have a option for plaintext when saving, so no


see all the way though

"Convert to plain-text" in the menu or comand-shift-t.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by Tick:
It was a joke.. but textedit in 10.3 doesn't have a option for plaintext when saving, so no

Huh? TextEdit always have an option to change to plain text since day one.

[Tick]

Originally posted by Synotic:
"Convert to plain-text" in the menu or comand-shift-t.

Ooooh.. see, I would have never seen that, doesn't make sense, it should be in save as...


Oh well, see is still mo betta

[yaro]

Millennium,

Where did you download the Beos image?

[Millennium]

Originally posted by yaro:
Millennium,

Where did you download the Beos image?

BeOS Personal Edition. Follow the instructions on the site, and get the Linux package. Untar the thing and copy the actual image (the largest of the files) wherever you keep your other images. QEMU can boot straight off of that.

[VEGAN]

I'm halfway through installing RedHat 9.
It's a bit slow, but let's see if it installs and works.

I got RH 9 PC version install disks and I'm trying to install them with X and GNOME.

[kupan787]

Originally posted by Millennium:
A good frontend for this would be much appreciated. The large number of CLI parameters is already getting rather cumbersome, particularly is you switch between operating systems often, as I do. I've taken to wrapping up the CLI calls into small one-line shell scripts, but a nice clean GUI could do Great Things here.

This is one of those times I've really wished for native Tk support, because this is a perfect candidate for automation via expect and a Tk-based GUI would work well as a cross-platform deal. Am I going to have to finally learn Cocoa?

I am almost done writing a front end. Basicly I have everything done. GUI controls to choose options, ability to save config files, and the ability to load config files (either from the toolbar, the file menu, drag and drop, or double clicking a config file). The one problem I am having is with the arguments. I have used NSTasks before, and everyhting looks like it should work. However, when trying to pass the arguments, I get things like:

/usr/local/bin/qemu: invalid option -- '-hda /Users/kupan787/winxp.img'

However that is a valid argument. Furthermore, I played around with only the one letter arguments (like -S), and everything would work fine. So I am guessing, for some reason, NSTask doens't like these "word" style arguments. Being new to UNIX still, I don't know what if anything I can do. I found this tidbit in the NSTask docs:

Arguments can be specified for an NSTask. These arguments do not undergo shell expansion, so you do not need to do special quoting, and shell variables, such as $PWD, are not resolved.

I am hoping someone here perhaps has some insight on how to get these arguments passed. That is the last hurtle and then I can release this out.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by kupan787:
However, when trying to pass the arguments, I get things like:

/usr/local/bin/qemu: invalid option -- '-hda /Users/kupan787/winxp.img'

However that is a valid argument.

I don't think so. Those ought to be two sequential arguments (the first argument being "-hda" and the second being "/Users/kupan787/winxp.img"). Remember, spaces separate arguments in the shell.

[Edited to correct typo.]

[VEGAN]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
I don't think so. Those ought to be two sequential arguments (the first argument being "hda" and the second being "/Users/kupan787/winxp.img"). Remember, spaces separate arguments in the shell.

I assume you mean first should be "-hda"

[VEGAN]

Originally posted by VEGAN:
I'm halfway through installing RedHat 9.
It's a bit slow, but let's see if it installs and works.

I got RH 9 PC version install disks and I'm trying to install them with X and GNOME.

The experiment was "successful".

On my TiBook 667 I created a 2G empty image file and proceeded installing RH9 on it. It installed and I'm currently running it in the background.

While it does run GNOME and all, it's very, very slow on my computer.

Technical notes:
It took me about 4-5 hours to install/run it.
2G is too little if you want any real applications on it. I didn't even have space for Mozilla. So I haven't tried if I can surf the net.

Overall: very interesting, but at the moment it is not fast enought to replace Mac OS X :-P
I'll try to install Fedora Core 2 tonight and see if that's any faster. I'll try to reduce the resolution and colors too as it might make it more "sane" using default values was too much

[maxintosh]

Very interesting, I'll be following this project closely now... I managed to get BeOS to run, although slowly and in grayscale. Shows a lot of promise though.

[hyperb0le]

Originally posted by kupan787:
I am almost done writing a front end. Basicly I have everything done. GUI controls to choose options, ability to save config files, and the ability to load config files (either from the toolbar, the file menu, drag and drop, or double clicking a config file).

If you need any icons or graphics (for the toolbar or just the application icon), I'd be willing to contribute whatever you need for free. E-mail me (hyperb0le AT spymac DOT com) or just reply here if you are interested.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by kupan787:
I am almost done writing a front end. Basicly I have everything done. GUI controls to choose options, ability to save config files, and the ability to load config files (either from the toolbar, the file menu, drag and drop, or double clicking a config file). The one problem I am having is with the arguments. I have used NSTasks before, and everyhting looks like it should work. However, when trying to pass the arguments, I get things like:

/usr/local/bin/qemu: invalid option -- '-hda /Users/kupan787/winxp.img'

However that is a valid argument. Furthermore, I played around with only the one letter arguments (like -S), and everything would work fine. So I am guessing, for some reason, NSTask doens't like these "word" style arguments. Being new to UNIX still, I don't know what if anything I can do. I found this tidbit in the NSTask docs:



I am hoping someone here perhaps has some insight on how to get these arguments passed. That is the last hurtle and then I can release this out.

You need to pass -hda and the img path as two separate arguments. Passing them as one argument like that causes the space to get escaped. The result is the same as typing the command like this:

qemu '-hda /Users/kupan787/winxp.img'

which will give you the same result.

[kupan787]

Originally posted by hyperb0le:
If you need any icons or graphics (for the toolbar or just the application icon), I'd be willing to contribute whatever you need for free. E-mail me (hyperb0le AT spymac DOT com) or just reply here if you are interested.

Sure, icons would be cool. I could use a total of 4 (application icon, configuration file icon, save toolbar icon, and open toolbar icon). You can email them to me at [email protected]

Also, I will post what I have now (thanks for those with the help with NSTask stuff). You can go grab it at http://www.macadvocacy.com/qemugui.zip. Let me know if there are any options you would like added, or if I should tweak anything at all. I have a lot of free time this week, and can make changes pretty quick.

Also, I could probably use a better name than QEMU GUI (cause that isn't really what it even is...) If anyone has a cool idea for a name, please let me know (either here, or at my email listed above).

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by Tick:
Ooooh.. see, I would have never seen that, doesn't make sense, it should be in save as...


Oh well, see is still mo betta

Ummm...it makes perfect sense. Works exactly the same way in Mail.app.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by kupan787:
Sure, icons would be cool. I could use a total of 4 (application icon, configuration file icon, save toolbar icon, and open toolbar icon). You can email them to me at [email protected]

Also, I will post what I have now (thanks for those with the help with NSTask stuff). You can go grab it at http://www.macadvocacy.com/qemugui.zip. Let me know if there are any options you would like added, or if I should tweak anything at all. I have a lot of free time this week, and can make changes pretty quick.

Also, I could probably use a better name than QEMU GUI (cause that isn't really what it even is...) If anyone has a cool idea for a name, please let me know (either here, or at my email listed above).

Why not add support for more disk images? QEMU lets you have two floppies and four hard drives.

[Tick]

Originally posted by Stradlater:
Ummm...it makes perfect sense. Works exactly the same way in Mail.app.

Hiding preferences in menu items is not cool. That was my point. And with mail.app, this also makes zero sense.

[kupan787]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Why not add support for more disk images? QEMU lets you have two floppies and four hard drives.

Ok, can do.

I didn't add the floppies from the get go, as I figured what is the need (the last PC I built I didn't even use a floppy). But I guess I shoudl add support for everything that QEMU supports.

[kupan787]

Ok, I just posted a quick update. Thanks to Matt for the start of the new icons! I am playing with the interface a bit (I hate hw it is so bulky....), but I have added in the ability to add up to two floppy images, and 4 hd images.

http://www.macadvocacy.com/qemugui.zip

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by kupan787:
Ok, I just posted a quick update. Thanks to Matt for the start of the new icons! I am playing with the interface a bit (I hate hw it is so bulky....), but I have added in the ability to add up to two floppy images, and 4 hd images.

http://www.macadvocacy.com/qemugui.zip

Please don't kill me but I think it might be nicer to use an NSTableView instead of four separate text views - just limit the table views to 4 items for the hard drives and 2 for the floppies. That way, if the QEMU folks ever remove that limit so you can use an unlimited number of disk images, you will be able to update the GUI without changing the interface drastically.

Oh, and in case you don't decide to use that suggestion - there's a typo in the Hard Drives tab - "forth" should be "fourth".

[Synotic]

Originally posted by Tick:
Hiding preferences in menu items is not cool. That was my point. And with mail.app, this also makes zero sense.

Preferences? I think the difference here is between "Save As", Export and Conversion. With save as, you're maintaining all of your data but in a different format. With plain text, depending on your document you're converting it, throwing out all style information. More akin to an export. Obviously there's a fine line but here I think it makes perfect sense. converting to plain text is an action that can be made on a document. If it were in save as, should it pop up a second sheet, second dialog alerting the user that it'll be throwing out any style information? It's as if you wanted your into document in bold and wanted a "bolded document" option to save as. To bold your document you would have to actually save your document which you may not want to do. Just as you may want to convert a document to plain text without saving it... Say you want to create a text version of an RTF file while maintaining the original. Or quickly turn a word document to text to copy an excerpt to the e-mail.

In TextEdit, I have my default as RTF since I create a few style documents, but I also code websites, rather than having to save right away just to get it to be a text document, I can quickly convert to text and start writing. I also don't like writing code in anti-aliased Lucida Grande, so I like to convert right away, but that's just me

Anyways, personally I think it makes perfect sense and see it as being more hidden (or at least as hidden) if it were buried deep in a save as dialog as opposed to being in the format menu. Just because something is in a menu doesn't mean it's "hidden". Now TextEdit's preferences on the other hand... don't get me started on that. I think someone should really reorganize them into something a bit more manageable. Oh well...

[MaxPower2k3]

this is really cool, i've got Windows XP almost installed on my rev. A 12" PowerBook. It's slow going, but it's working so far. It's funny, a disk image of my Windows 98 CD didn't work (kept asking me for the real CD) but a disk image of the Windows XP CD worked just fine. I imagine it'll run quite slow, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it runs.

oh, and much thanks to kupan787 for the GUI, it's a great help and timesaver.

[Horsepoo!!!]

BeOS 5 comes on an image with a .be extension which is not recognized as a valid disk image in QEMU GUI...could that be changed?