will MAC OS work on my IBM computer?

[dimava]

Hi, right now i have windows me on a powerfull athlon 500mhz computer, 160mb ram, etc.

if i partition my computer, will i be able to run mac os?

the real question here is, WHY?!?!?!?

Mac's suck... and I'm not sure, but I don't think MacOS will work on an IBM computer.

[dimava]

well... mac is crach proof, therefore, its nice to use the computer, even though its not vb, and know that no matter how fast you click/do stuff its not gonna crash. and its almost stress-free too

Crash proof!?!! Don't make me laugh!!!!!
My college has a fairly mixed spread of Macs and PCs and the technicians won't touch the Macs!!!

I did tech support for the Macs in our "Multimedia Centre" for about 2 months...geez! Never want to do that again... for instance...why when they can't find a network connection do they look through the printer port? ***!?! And why...forget it...it's not worth it. Macs are crap, under powered and whatever you think they certainly are not stable.

More to the point...is it possible to run NT on a Mac? :) Better still...blat it and install Linux. :D

Here's a page I wrote about a year ago...

http://mralston.brinkster.net/default.asp?startpage=antimac

It lists many of my grudges against Macs...but there are lots more! :D

Incidentally the background pic shows 27 broken 17" Mac monitors...Apple Centre quoted us £400 each to fix them - my 19" Belinea only cost £216 brand new!!!!!

[zmerlinz]

i was under the impression that macos ran of a ROM chip, so how would you manage to get macos onto your computer, it sounds intreging to me

[parksie]

Nope. MacOS runs from the HD -- you must be thinking of RISC OS, which is ROM-based.

crash proof? HAHAHAHAHAHA you must be thinking of linux,
my mac used to crash all the time, and the ones at school crash all the time as well.... hehehe, crashproof... hehe...

[parksie]

Actually...RISC OS is the only system I've never crashed.

So put THAT in your roll-up and smoke it :p

[zmerlinz]

i used to love risc os but i did manage to crash it a few times, though it is difficult

[parksie]

Obvious question: So where did MS steal the idea for a taskbar from then :rolleyes:

What Acorn computer did you have? I had an A310 (still do :))

whats risc os?

[HarryW]

The OS for the Acorn Archimedes. It's a RISC CPU (Reduced Instruction Set Computer, as opposed to CISC, Complex Instruction blah blah, in case you didn't already know) so they call it RISC OS.

I never liked it.

The basic image that a Mac boots off (the grey screen, the horrible bong noise etc) is on a rom chip...the os itself is installed to the hard disk like any other.

One of the techies that worked at my company (seriously knew his stuff this guy...yeah...one of them) recconed that if you could blat the rom chip and give it a x86 image then it should be possible to install nt on it...unfortunately neither of us had the equipment to ***** with the rom chip :(

[HarryW]

You'd need to replace it with your own PIC wouldn't you?

[Iain17]

Macs use Risc chips themselves dont they, thats why the haven't got passed 500mhz yet, they are having probs, but 500mhz risc, is a lot faster than 500mhz cisc.

So i think the simple answer to your question is no.

[dimava]

who said yes?

[HarryW]

I don't see how you could get NT running on a Mac, or MacOS running on an x86 architecture PC. Surely the compiled code is full of the wrong opcodes for the CPU to use. Perhaps you could emulate it?

[Iain17]

Well, you can run some windows software in a Mac, as there is software to emulate windows programs. However to run NT on a mac, if it worked at all, you would be running Mac OS, then an emmulator, then NT, so performance, not to mention stability would be terrible.

I am not sure if there are Mac emmulators for the PC, but no doubt there will be somewhere, but its the same deal, running 2 OSs and a emmulator.

Simply buy a mac and a pc.

***** the Mac. Why would you want one anyway!?

By replacing the mac rom image with a pc one the machine itself would appear to be a PC - to the OS - the OS would be able to send the same "opcodes" as it normally would. I'm not talking about emulation here. This is of course all speculation and I don't exactly expect anyone to do it in the near future - too much hassle and as I said earlier...why bother?

Back to emulators...for emulating a PC on a Mac you can use RealPC or SoftWindows...I've tried them both and they seem to be the same program except that SoftWindows comes bundled with a CD to install Windows on it - the other is just a PC emulator.

For emulating a Mac on a PC I did see a really good looking emulator once but I can't remember where. :( However, you can try Basilisk which emulates a Mac II...you need to create a rom image off a Mac II for this and I ain't got access to one. :( Otherwise another I found is Executor by ARDI - they've created their own version of Mac OS so I guess it must run a bit like WINE.

[HarryW]

So.... the CPU instructions go through this ROM image thing first? Sorry if I seem a little dense, but I don't see how code compiled for one CPU with its own ISA can run on another CPU with a different ISA with no emulation.

[Iain17]

That’s because you are right Harry. It is a simple matter of different instruction sets in the CPU.

Macs, as has been stated, use Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) chips while IBM Compatible computers use (Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) chips.

While the RISC chip takes a certain instruction to achieve something, the CISC chip will use another instruction. This is the point of emulators, they convert the original instruction into the correct one for the cpu that will receive it.

If any of you have heard of Transmeta and the Curose chips you will know what I mean. This chip is supposed to be very energy efficient, but not particularly fast. It was designed with laptops in mind. The way it achieves it efficiency is with the instruction set it uses, it is a type of RISC chip I believe. The only way they could get it to sell though was to have a software layer around the chip that converts any instructions from the code being run, x86 code, to the instructions that the Curose chip understands, otherwise It would not be able to run any of today’s software.

[nukem996]

MACS ARE NOT CRASH PROOF!!!! I CRASH THEM ALL THE TIME AT SCHOOL!!!!!!

[sail3005]

i bet one of nukems "hackers" could install mac OS on your IBM even if all they knew was your IP address!

[Visual Programmer]

LoL! and I bet that they can also make smoke come out of my monitor, and my TV.