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NT4 on PowerMacs?

paws

Well-known member
Right so, I'm not actually interested in this, but I'm quite sure I saw it reported in the previous version of this forum that it could in fact be done... did I hallucinate that, or will it float?

 

MacJunky

Well-known member
If I recall it was only for certain IBM boxes with PPC chips and will not work on Macs.

Something like that anyway.

 

iMac600

Well-known member
NT4 isn't compatible with the Mac's platform or firmware.

Personally i'd like to see a Virtualiser so we could run NT4 in a window, but on the actual PowerPC processor.

We can only dream. :p

 

II2II

Well-known member
Or the PPC version of OS/2. :)

I wonder how hard it would be to adapt MOL for other PPC based OSes?

 

alk

Well-known member
It will run on CHRP or PReP Macs. You would need a Starmax 5500, 6000, or the like. There was a prototype CHRP Power Computing box that never saw the light of day, as well. With enough effort, you might get it to run on a 4400, but I doubt it.

Peace,

Drew

 

The Macster

Well-known member
Personally i'd like to see a Virtualiser so we could run NT4 in a window, but on the actual PowerPC processor.
NT4 for PPC would of course be next to useless though, given the number of NT PPC apps available - it would certainly be for curiosity purposes only. I don't think there are even any service packs or remotely modern versions of Internt Explorer for it, as MS dropped support for PPC and MIPS very soon after NT4 was released, only keeping x86 and Alpha.

 

II2II

Well-known member
Well, NT probably saw better PPC support than OS/2. From what I've heard, OS/2 on the PPC never really saw the light of day. If you wanted it, you were sorta stuck requesting it from IBM.

But if both of them had compilers, I'm sure that you could make it do interesting stuff. And I seem to recall hearing that OS/2 PPC did have a working VDM.

 

Charlieman

Well-known member
From memory, wasn't PPC version of OS/2 available for the PPC Thinkpads? Finding a copy in the wild would be hard as I am sure that only IBM staff had access. Ditto, NetWare for PPC and Novell staff.

 

MacJunky

Well-known member
I wonder how hard it would be to adapt MOL for other PPC based OSes?
There is an OS X port called MoM (Mac-on-Mac) but it cannot run or be run in Tiger or G5s and intel Macs.Still though, there are still plenty of G3s and G4s in use to make adding Tiger compatibility worth while.

.. Or were you talking about making MoL/MoM run currently unsupported operating systems?

 

Big Bird

Well-known member
There was in fact a PPC version of OS/2 Warp released for the IBM Personal Power series desktops, models 830 and 850, and ThinkPads 820 and 850. It was an extremely low key release (especially after expectations, but IBM took so long in development, the market had dried up) and was never actively marketed. It shipped on a few systems though, that were available to the public, so in theory, a CD or two might exist . . . I've seen a beta version once, but never a release version. If you happen to come across it, good luck finding a machine it will install on and drivers for, well, virtually anything. It is interesting to note that this beta version I saw had full PC-DOS 7 support (through x86 emulation, of course), and even ran Win-OS/2 programs full screen or in a window, on the PPC platform, although full TCP/IP stack support was never implemented.

NT 4 for PPC is real, and I, in fact, own a copy . . . somewhere . . . :) Microsoft quietly dropped support for it after Service Pack 2. Of course, iMac600 is correct: there is absolutely no hope of support with the Mac firmware. For the masochists among us, it is possible Open Firmware could be coerced into booting off of a specified non-Mac partition containing an NT installation, perhaps using a piece of Open Firmware interface software (I remember something like this was available for LinuxPPC distros, but I can't find a link now). Then, even if you got that, you'd run into a lack of support in NT's HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), which would be a problem even with native PPC virtualization software. Windows NT requires much, MUCH more than do the Mac OS and UNIX beasts in terms of hardware support. Merely being compiled for the right chip gets you about 25% of the way.

Indeed, your best bet is to go with emulation. Contrary to reports by Microsoft and other skeptics, all versions of NT run beautifully emulated on a Power Macintosh.

 

The Macster

Well-known member
NT 4 for PPC is real, and I, in fact, own a copy . . . somewhere . . . :)
Anyone who's got NT has a copy of the PPC version - all NT discs have x86, PPC, Alpha and MIPS versions on them, I have several install discs that would have originally been supplied with ordinary PCs but have all of the architectures on them. Same with NT 3.x, which also included all of these architectures. Windows 2000 was x86 only, though an Alpha version was produced up to RC1 and then dropped for the final release.

 

II2II

Well-known member
I was refering to using different guest OSes for MOL.

I know that the NT4 disks supported multiple platforms, but I don't recall seeing PPC. Maybe because mine are pre-patched for SP3? Anyway, I'll have to check my NT4 and NT3.5 beta CDs later.

 

iMac600

Well-known member
I have NT4 CD's with Service Pack 4, and they support PowerPC processors. However the Service Pack 4 CD is separate, despite being bundled in the box, and likely only for x86 systems.

 

II2II

Well-known member
Yeah, I have the SP4 CD as a separate entity too. (With an updated ISS, without a gopher server. Curse Microsoft!) I have no idea why mine was only partially patched.

 

The Macster

Well-known member
I have NT4 CD's with Service Pack 4, and they support PowerPC processors. However the Service Pack 4 CD is separate, despite being bundled in the box, and likely only for x86 systems.
Yes, I have an OEM set with an NT4 disc and SP3 disc - the OS disc contains all four architectures, whereas the Service Pack contains only x86 and Alpha, as they had dropped support for the other two architectures by then. The service pack CDs were always shipped separately with NT4, as it was not possible to slipstream a service pack into the main installation CD like it is with Windows 2000 onwards - nowadays they just integrate the latest SP into the main disc.

 
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