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A variation on this has been available at the OnMac forum for over a year now: http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=2793 (Alas, the forum has pretty much become overrun with spam, and the administrator has been MIA for quite some time... so it's fairly difficult to find anything new over there these days.)

Yes.. You can even tri-boot.

http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_Bo otCamp

Apple had a unique product all their own prior to converting to x86 hardware. Given the cash injection from Microsoft [0] a number of years ago, and the recent windows support [1] on the mac, Apple isn't that unique. You just end up running Windows on Apple hardware - so what? The only thing I can see happening is that the software industry is going to be considering Microsoft alternatives for the first time in over a decade. If that's all that comes out of it, I'm all for it.

[0] http://news.com.com/2100-1001-202143.html
[1] http://onmac.net/
      http://www.macwindows.com/

If Apple is going to start charging for Boot Camp, I guess its time for dual-booters to start using the multi-purpose EasyBCD or OnMac to get Windows running on your Macintosh. They're both free, and written by the community, not a big money-making company. You can (and should) donate if you like, of course.

...Ahem... http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_Bo otCamp

..sigh... i wish i could build a box running linux with those specs ....anyone know where i can find one ?

The Apple Store, http://store.apple.com./
I believe some folks have BootCamp working with Linux, http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_Bo otCamp.

FUD, FUD, FUD. I'm not a Mac user and even I found it trivially easy to find info on this.

• http://forum.onmac.net/archive/index.php/t-875.htm l: "Just bought the game today, runs great! I've got it running in the higher range for graphics ect. also. MacBook Pro 2.16GHz 100GB 7200rpm 1GB RAM ATI x1600 Overclocked to 430/470"; "With the exception of any shadowing effects, all effects maxed, resolution set to 1280 720, x1600 OC'd to 470/470, Bloom Lighting I am able to acheive 40 FPS out in the world and 60 SOLID FPS when inside a dungeon or building."
• http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3149424
• http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=21912 4
• http://digg.com/gaming_news/Video_of_Elder_Scrolls _IV:_Oblivion_running_on_a_Macbook_Pro

Then the users purchase a Mac, try OS X, realize they don't actually NEED Windows, and never use BootCamp at all.

Well they'll need it to boot Linux actually... :-)

Well, apparently Apple wants us to all go out and buy the full version of Windows XP...

You don't seem to understand the technical (or commercial) reality...

You only need a full version of XP due to a minor technical limitation, which also existed in the unoffical solution released before Apple's.

I have no doubt these will be overcome by the time the production version of Boot Camp ships. If not, you can always work around it.

But, some notes:

- Even the existing http://onmac.net/ solution wasn't "illegal" or against any Apple or Microsoft license agreement - not saying the summary said that, but it kind of implied it might be

- The HUGE difference with Boot Camp is that it includes Windows XP driver profiles for Apple-specific hardware - including video drivers! Hello games and video intensive Windows software!

- Another big difference is that it includes a live repartitioning tool so the drive doesn't have to be reformatted to install Windows as the current solution requires

- And, it wraps everything up in a nice "setup assistant"-like interface

- It does burn a custom Windows XP installation disc (no, this does not violate any Microsoft or Windows license agreement, as making custom Windows installation discs has been routine in IT shops for years)

- Currently, it looks like it supports only Windows XP SP2, not any multi-disc XP-based installations (or other non-Windows OSes), but since Media Center is already working with the other solution by making a custom installation disc, I have no doubts that it could work with this as well

It's pretty incredible that Apple has decided to do this, to say the least.

However, the true benefit for many people won't come from dual-booting, but from running Windows (or any other x86 OS) in a virtualization environment alongside OS X with no dual booting or rebooting needed.

Virtualization company Parallels announced that it will be bringing its Parallels Workstation virtualization product to Intel-based Macs. Parallels is a hypervisor-based (with a kernel module) virtual machine solution already shipping for Windows and Linux, and is the first desktop virtualization product to support Intel VT/Vanderpool CPU "partitioning". It's also only $50. Parallels also has a long list of officially supported guest OSes, and that's just the ones that are *officially* supported. So either way, we'll have a nice dual boot solution AND a nice virtualization solution!

So Boot Camp will be standard with Leopard...great. What about the thing that a lot of us actually want, virtualization from Apple, rumored to be in Leopard? And not just virtualization to run x86 OSes, but to also run multiple instances of Intel-variants of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server (*as well* as any other x86 OS)? Now THAT would be the holy grail. Desktop virtualization for things like Windows and Linux/BSD environments, and server virtualization for multiple Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server instances on a single box.

Since Apple has shown it's been officially willing to acknowledge the alternate OS/Windows universe on Intel-based Macs, I actually have a lot more hope for native, integrated virtualization in Leopard as well!

I love IBM Thinkpads too. This whole Lenovo business has rattled my confidence too. With that said, Apple is an American company that manufactures their laptops in China. Windows XP has been installed on a Macbooks. I have owned Powerbooks and they are nice but I can't say that they are reliable as the old IBM Thinkpads. I believe Apple's changing the design as often as they do bring bugs into the notebooks.

It really depends what you want to do.

A visit to the forums at onmac.net (the home of the fully working XP on Mac contest won by narf and blanka for their fully working dual-boot solution) shows a lot of angst over not yet having fully working graphics acceleration, due to a lack of ATI x1600 drivers.

Such angst might also exist for a Virtual PC solution if, as in the past with this software, graphics are not fully accelerated. This is mainly for games of course, but in the Wiki on that site which shows tested software, many people have expressed desires to run high-end 3D and scientific OpenGL applications.

So for these, booting as a PC is the better option. Besides, it takes my MacBook Pro less than 30 secs to reboot from Mac OS X to XP and vice versa.

Another area is hardware drivers which are not fully compatible with the Virtual PC environment. In the past I've been using a specialized piece of mapping software with a GPS hardware device (via RS232 serial converted to USB). Although I could tortuously configure Virtual PC to work with it, it was always forgetting settings, or directing the adapter to the wrong port, etc. Now with dual-booting, it just works each and every time I plug it it.

I agree having a virtualization option would be great, but it is not always the best way of running another OS on the same hardware.

It doesn't have to be an April 1 joke, since any visitor to onmac.net can announce to themselves that dual-booting XP and OS X on a Intel-based Mac is quite straightforward, thanks to the work of narf and blanka.

Although, it probably is a (feeble) joke, because Apple didn't do anything to encourage dual-booting (other than switch to Intel chips) and Mr Jobs is unlikely to celebrate his rival's OS appearing on his precious hardware, even if it does bring a few extra sales.

Here is the official Windows XP on Mac website: http://onmac.net/

The patch is available here: http://download.onmac.net/

Here is the official Windows XP on Mac website: http://onmac.net/

The patch is available here: http://download.onmac.net/

Here you go:

http://onmac.net/

Doesn't look like all of these drivers are working from here.

I don't know if anybody is still reading this thread, but my proposed solution has now been tested and verified to work (with a few minor tweaks) by the onmac.net contributors. You can read the revised instructions here.

From what I've read, the XP drivers for the onboard graphics call the video bios

http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Drivers

      The drivers expect the ATI Bios to be present in order to initialize the chip. Things like clock frequencies, memory
      frequencies, power management, all the is done through the video bios. The macpro video chip only supports EFI, it has the
      old BIOS completely stripped out. Thus I find it very doubtfull any video drivers work out of the box. As I see it there
      are a couple of possible solutions, from easiest to hardest.
      1. Flash the onboard chip with the bios from a PC version and hope to god it has the EFI support as well.
      2. Have the custom bootloader load the bios from a PC version into RAM and map all BIOS calls to that.
      3. Have the custom bootloader load the video EFI driver, and a thin BIOS layer that reroutes all BIOS calls into the
      corresponding EFI calls.
      4. Try to duplicate all the video BIOS functionality.

You can certainly do this in an NT driver, IIRC it's discouraged because the kernel has to disable interrupts, switch to v86 mode, call the bios, and then switch back. xom.efi (presumably - I've never seen the source code) handles int 13 calls to read the disk, but it can't handle the custom int 10 calls that the XP driver makes to the video bios.

Interestingly, it's not possible in Vista

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firm ware/lddm_bios.mspx

Update:

Check out http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Main_Page for info on installing Windows XP on Intel Macs as well as links to drivers.

Drivers and guide here

http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/HOWTO
http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showforum= 63

http://download.onmac.net/

Mirror list to needed slipstream file.

Apparently the idea is to use a program like nlite or manually inject this file into the windows xp installation files before burning it to a disc and installing it.

Main site is down from traffic from slashdot, digg, inq, cnet, google, wikipedia, zdnet, and bassically every other tech site in existance. etc etc etc,

Where can I get this? I haven't found any details or downloads yet...

Okay. here's the first half of your request. That download page has links to five mirrors. "Me too"s and more extensive details to follow as soon as the servers (wiki and forums) recover from the onslaught of traffic.

Okay. here's the first half of your request. That download page has links to five mirrors. "Me too"s and more extensive details to follow as soon as the servers (wiki and forums) recover from the onslaught of traffic.

A contemporary implementation of the Framework on a PC includes a CSM for supplying services to operating systems that do not boot using EFI and for supporting legacy option ROMs on add-in cards. For legacy boot the Framework initializes the platform's silicon and executes EFI drivers.

Details to follow on http://onmac.net/.

http://www.onmac.net/

Says they are testing the submitted "solution".

A contemporary implementation of the Framework on a PC includes a CSM for supplying services to operating systems that do not boot using EFI and for supporting legacy option ROMs on add-in cards. For legacy boot the Framework initializes the platform's silicon and executes EFI drivers.

The contest home page has a list at the bottom of all donators. The largest donation is $1,111.11, the smallest a penny.

(tig)

...Amit Singh from IBM and kernelthread.com (slashdotted 16 times for excellent technical articles on various bits of internals of Apple hardware and Mac OS X) has his own legacy boot solution as well. From a rejected submission:

It appears that Amit Singh of IBM Almaden Research Center, of kernelthread.com and author of Mac OS X Internals, has devised a method to allow legacy, or BIOS-based, booting on Intel-based Macs, which they're calling "BAMBIOS". This means operating systems that currently only support legacy booting, such as many Linux distributions that don't yet support EFI, or things like Windows XP and the forthcoming Windows Vista (the 32-bit version of which will lack EFI support), will now be able to run on Intel-based Macs without modification (and completely legally). There is also another solution from "narf2006", described here and shown in this flickr set of photos. narf2006's solution is awaiting verification by Colin for the $12,000 pot. Time to get that MacBook Pro you've been waiting on for the best of both worlds, everyone...

So even if narf2006's solution isn't real, Amit's solution most certainly is, since he has a great deal of credibility. One way or another, we'll all be able to boot Windows directly on our Intel-based Macs.

This will be great news for people interested in Windows gaming on an Intel-based Mac (who really need the direct video access) and/or people who just want to do it NOW; however, a virtualization solution running under Mac OS X, such as VMware or Parallels, will be the real holy grail for most users. Most people don't want/need/care about the highest graphics and I/O performance; just the ability to run Windows side-by-side with Mac OS X at a speed that is more than usable, and to also have some capability to seamlessly share things like clipboards and files between the environments (as a nice VM environment would most certainly do). Not to mention not having to reboot.

In any case, even dual booting will be a welcome capability. It remains to be seen how convoluted the process is...

Also, I just spoke with Colin Nederkoorn (the guy running the contest) moments ago, and narf2006's solution has NOT been submitted to him yet. He said that narf2006 said he's "cleaning it up" and will be submitting it "later this week". So, no one, including Colin, has actually seen this solution working yet. Also, he apparently hasn't been in communication with Amit on the BAMBIOS solution as yet...

So what is the difference between EFI on IA64 and X86? Why doesn't Windows have support for Intel EFI? Its simple, right? Been there, done that, for years, even.

Seems like they could just release a patch or something..

I think its a bit more complex than that. Or else someone would have claimed their reward money for getting Windows XP to boot on a MacBook.

If its so easy you should do it and claim you cash..

Good idea. Now implement it and claim the bounty.

And has anyone tried sticking in a pre-release DVD of Windows Vista, holding down the D key, and seeing what happens?

I tried a few times to compose an answer to that question without being sarcastic, but I couldn't pull it off. In short, yea, pretty much everybody who has spent 2 seconds thinking about Windows on Mac has thought of this idea and/or tried it. I'll just point you to here, here, and here. I'm sorry to be pissy, but the forums where people are actually trying to work on this problem are so cluttered with this "novel" idea that it gets really annoying after a while.

So as not to be a complete rant, I'll explain why this doesn't currently work. The Mac uses the new UGA standard for video cards, and does not support VGA at all. Windows (even Vista) only supports VGA (or UGA with VGA fallback, which Mac doesn't have either). There are also drive partitioning issues, among other problems. Basically, any feature that Apple didn't need for booting MacOS was left out of the EFI, including BIOS-compatibility mode as you noted. No current PC hardware is so legacy-free. However, with a bit of massaging, the Vista install disc does boot, you just can't see anything on the screen. When Vista gets a real UGA driver, we should be able to make quite a bit more progress.

Hurry up and do it!

Reward offered for Windows XP on the new x86 Macs.

The pot is up to $11,318 for whoever does it first (with working, repeatable instructions). That'll buy you some nice bling.