Windows emulator?

[Momiji]

So I have a friend who wants to run programs for Windows, but he uses a Mac OSX. He's actually a member here, although he hasn't posted much. Anyway, are there any Windows emulators for the Mac, and which is the best, and how do you make it work? He's apparently too stubborn to ask for help for himself, so I'm going to ask in his place.

Please help, pretty pretty please?~<3

[rubah]

HAHAHA I HAVE JUST SUCCEEDED AT THIS:

Ahem.

1) get your osx dvd; run 'Optional Installs' or something like that. You will have to scroll down to find it. THIS IS THE CRUCIAL STEP. Trust me, I tore my hair out for days trying to figure out why installing xcode tools DID NOT WORK. xD

2) While installing, make absolutely sure that X11 gets installed. THIS IS ALSO CRUCIAL. hell it's all crucial.

3) Download Darwine - News (http://darwine.sourceforge.net/)

4) ???

5) profit. the ??? is because darwine runs things very slowly and sometimes crashy but you can run things such as mIRC on it! And even DCC with mirc.

elsewise you will try these things:
1) crossover
2) parallels
3) bootcamp

but those all cost money (except bootcamp if you have xp and have leopard, but I don't have leopard, and besides you'd have to actually boot into xp).

Every time I run a new app successfully in darwine I am very happy. I'm happy just getting it successfully installed, actually.

(also tell your friend to join the macserialjunkie forum. He will never go back. ever)

Also tell him that there are amazing free/shareware apps for osx that you will probably find something that means you dont' need to emulate as badly as you thought you did. Make sure you look through all those first. I can give general recommendations on certain types of programs.

[Momiji]

Well, what he really wants is to play Touhou games, but his computer lags when there are even too many windows open. So...I suppose since the emulator is slow and crashy, something like Touhou would absolutely crash it?

[Mirage]

Tell him to get a real computer, not a piece of fashion.

[o_O]

Well, OSX is UNIX-like, therefore better than Windows. :p

A real OS is Gentoo Linux though. :p

[Peegee]

As I understand it, you can install windows on the mac

[crono_logical]

Isn't there something like WINE for OSX yet? I think there might be :p WINE is the way to play Touhou on normal linux platforms (http://pooshlmer.com/touhouwiki/index.php/Running_in_Linux) (yay touhou wiki) :p Failing that, if you don't want to dualboot and whatnot, you could try VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) and install a full copy of Windows in that - dunno what the performance would be like but hey, if it's slow, that'd make playing touhou in Lunatic mode much easier :D

[Momiji]

Isn't there something like WINE for OSX yet? I think there might be :p WINE is the way to play Touhou on normal linux platforms (http://pooshlmer.com/touhouwiki/index.php/Running_in_Linux) (yay touhou wiki) :p Failing that, if you don't want to dualboot and whatnot, you could try VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) and install a full copy of Windows in that - dunno what the performance would be like but hey, if it's slow, that'd make playing touhou in Lunatic mode much easier :D

Well, this isn't for me. But yeah, Lunatic mode would be nice if it were slower. xD

[rubah]

munty doesn't read my posts :(

[crono_logical]

no, but I wanted to say something about touhou since it's cool :D now excuse me whilst I go back to sorting out the 20 GB of touhou-related oggs I've somehow amassed recently :p

[Momiji]

I'll tell him about WINE, then.


Munty, what's your highest score in any Touhou game? I just broke a billion on Imperishable Night. :D

[Kes]

I'm not sure if Darwine works on PowerPC Macs, but I know that things like Bootcamp/Parallels/Fusion won't.

Assuming he has an Intel Mac, he could use any of these options. As for the lag issue, he may want to look into upgrading his RAM (not through Apple though because they seriously overcharge for the stuff). I know Apple was very into giving less than 2GB of RAM in almost all of the stuff pre latest release, and while the computers still function okay, eh, they could be better.

[o_O]

Running a virtual machine will need a lot of memory. I don't know anything about those games, but if they have graphics any more modern than Morrowind you'll have trouble with VMs. I don't even know if Parallels' VMs have DirectX support but I know VMWare's only have experimental support.

Darwine runs on PowerPC, but not easily. I'd imaging the reason is something to do with the fact that the instruction translation for x86 is mostly complete, whereas PowerPC's set is still pretty heavily in development. Not to mention that WINE was written for x86. :p

[Momiji]

Running a virtual machine will need a lot of memory. I don't know anything about those games, but if they have graphics any more modern than Morrowind you'll have trouble with VMs. I don't even know if Parallels' VMs have DirectX support but I know VMWare's only have experimental support.

Darwine runs on PowerPC, but not easily. I'd imaging the reason is something to do with the fact that the instruction translation for x86 is mostly complete, whereas PowerPC's set is still pretty heavily in development. Not to mention that WINE was written for x86. :p

Ah no, Touhou games are hardly Morrowind quality. The graphics are slightly better than SNES graphics, I'd say.

[rubah]

if he has a powerpc he can run virtual pc from microsoft for free and the question is moot.

[Kes]

Seriously? Because I have an older Mac at home and that would be rather useful. When did this come out/why in the world would they make it compatible with PowerPC?

[rubah]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

They figure since powerpc is gone and there's bootcamp they don't have to do any of the hard work anymore, so they haven't made a version for intel.

And if you can't get a free download, I will happily use my college of engineering fee!access to get one for you.

[edit- This link might be more to the point: Microsoft Virtual PC 7.0.3 software download - Mac OS X - VersionTracker (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/1006) ]

[Kes]

Wow, shiny. Many thanks; I'll make sure to try this as soon as I see my computer again.