open src alternatives to virtual pc

A

andehlu

this modern love
hey all,
Does anyone know if there is any other option to virtual pc? I REALLY need to test my sites in IE for PC but dont have the cash for virtual pc.... i was hoping something stable and open src.....
Thanks
 
Sounds like for the time being you need to be somewhat tech saavy to install it and use it. But the benchmarks are not bad.

I have a PC at home but wouldn't mind testing it for kicks.

Couldnt hurt to try. Let us know how it goes if you do!
 
ya i got stuck on the install. It says that its checking disc size before installing windows andf then just hangs there....i let it run for over an hour twice. Dam..... anyone else have experience with this?
 
You could have but the info for qemuX says it will do the whole shooting match for you.

What OS are you trying to install with it? 98? 98SE? XP HE? XP Pro?

I will have to try it when I get home and see what happens.
 
The current version is buggy. The reason it hangs is because it's looking for a library (libSDL) that is installed in the wrong location. A few weeks ago, I emailed the author about the problem, but from the looks of things, he hasn't changed anything yet. Just email him and let him know of the problem. That's the only thing you can do for now.
 
iEmulator is a commercial product based on qemu (it's not a license violation, incidentally - he uses LGPL libraries).

Supposedly pretty good, and cheap too.
 
Last night when I got home, and remembered, I DLed and installed Qemu and QemuX. However I was never able to get anything to work. When I tried using my Win98 disc, it just kept telling me that it was doing something and spinning and spinning but nothing happened. I also tried a linux distribution disc, same thing.
 
I would be willing to bet that VirtualPC is the fastest x86 emulator on the market. I don't think Bochs or Queermux or any other open-source alternative is going to beat the speed and ease-of-use of VirtualPC.

Sure, we can hope for better emulation in the future, but for now, VirtualPC is the "fast" answer to emulation.
 
Considering the fact that VPC has many years of development optimization under it's belt, unless someone huge had an emulator in the works with tons of money behind it, you probably can't beat VPC.

There was another one for a short time, that just emulated the chip and you had to install your own Windows... I rememebr the file was like 300k or something. ANyone remember that one?

I see that Bochs is being used underneath some of the nicer emulators out there like OpenOSX's WinTel.

Seems to me tho that it would just easier to build a cheap PC to do all this for you.
 
While digging around on this subject I was reminded of what had been and was squashed at Apple. Anyone remember the PC emulator that was part of OSX before it was released to the public? A hacked version that worked with the Public Beta floated around a while but the performance was so bad it wasn't worth using. It worked like Classic mode, only running Windows or similar Intel OS.

I know rumours have been going around about this reappearing again but I doubt it. Would be nice to have Apple behind it, since it would mean it would be a solid performer. But why exactly, I ask myself, would Apple create something that let us run Windows?
 
As much as I value my VirtualPC, I maintain that with the plethora of cheap PCs out there, if you really want to run Windows, buy a PC. I maintain that anyone who can afford a powerful enough Apple can afford the $400 PC that the Mac Mini is *always* being compared to.

$.02
 
....for sure chronbe. Although im not interested in running doom 3 emulated. Im just looking for win to run IE thats it. So im not really worried about speed or anything.
 
Andehlu - I have two main ways of checking IE functionality, VirtualPC, and Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection.

Both do the job better than any other solution (and RDC better than anything else).

Wait until Darwine gets good enough to run Windows executables.



One thing that I DO wish we could still use were DOS compatibility cards (of course upgraded to AMD K7s or something). In the olden days (for a whole lot of money) they were the best way to have it all going on in one machine.
 
I had the public beta of OS X and I dont remember any windows emulator.

Now, under Rhapsody, there was something called blue box (or was it red box?) anyway, the Macs had classic(codenamed blue box?) , and x86 had this RedBox application which was able to run windows exes under rhapsody, now this way ONLY on x86 boxes :)
 
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