Multi-booting Mac Intel Developer Machines

ytsejam-ppc writes "Ross Carlson over at Jasbone.com has a great article up on how to install multiple operating systems on the new Intel based developer edition Macs. His particular setup triple-booted Mac OS X 10.4.1 (Intel), CentOS 4 and Windows XP. Just makes me drool."

Comments

This is nice...

[daveschroeder]

...and this is easy since the Developer Transition Platform is just running a generic Intel motherboard, generic Intel video chipset, an Intel Pentium 4 660 processor with HT, and a standard Intel BIOS (NOT a Phoenix BIOS as has been incorrectly reported elsewhere), but what will really be great is when someone makes a Virtual PC- or vmware-like product (perhaps even one of those products themselves) that is a virtual machine that runs under Mac OS X that allows running essentially any x86 OS at near-full speed, side by side with Mac OS X, without having to reboot.

Since it will be running on x86 hardware, processor instructions do not have to be emulated: they can run natively at near-full speed of the underlying hardware.

Further, though Apple will do nothing to stop users from installing Windows on production Intel-based Macintosh systems, it's likely that the production systems will evolve beyond the generic hardware that makes the Developer Transition Platform. Apple itself has said, "Don't assume that what you see in the transition boxes represents what will be present in the final product." This means there may be additional specialized hardware for which Windows drivers and specialized support profiles will not be maintained by Apple. Of course, this isn't stopping anyone from making them, and Intel has said that Intel-based Macs will use commodity Intel processors, chipsets, and other support components, but it might not be quite as seamless as just popping in a Windows CD and installing (though it very well could be).

Let's also not forget that the production machines may not be - and likely will not be - using BIOS, rendering useless any such conventional PC multi-boot configurations. (But even with EFI or Open Firmware, there's no reason Apple couldn't maintain a robust multi-boot system.)

The point is that a virtual machine product could offer a supported configuration for x86 OSes, including Windows, Linux variants, etc., without the headache and hassle of rebooting into another OS. Sure, dual/multi-booting has benefits, and certainly this will be possible on even the production hardware, but most users would likely prefer a Virtual PC-like environment for running x86 OSes/applications without rebooting.

On this topic, one wonders if Microsoft will be the entity that releases this first. After all, they've already got Virtual PC for Mac, and Virtual PC for Windows (and Microsoft Virtual Server) is exactly this type of virtual machine product, albeit for Windows. On one hand, you can argue that for Microsoft, it's just another copy of Windows sold, so why should they care? But on the other hand, if they make a first-class VM product for Mac OS X that runs Windows (and other x86 OSes) seamlessly at near-full speed of the native hardware, it definitely assists in the sales of more machines designed primarily to run Mac OS X, which could be a poor strategic choice...

But even if Microsoft doesn't do it, let's hope someone like EMC does with vmware.

For more general information, see http://appleintelfaq.com/.

Re:now for the real question

[rsborg]

Which OS runs phtoshop faster?

Jeebus, this is a no-brainer. Obviously windows... the OSX code is all running under rosetta, unless someone has a nifty CS3 beta or something lying around. What would be more interesting is if someone who writes a cross platform win/mac software could test speed of their app across the two platforms after compiling for intel on OSX...

The article (in case it goes away)

[Anonymous Coward]

July 21, 2005 Multibooting Intel based Macs - A Step-by-step How to Guide Disclaimer: We have read the NDA from Apple and do not see that this violates it. If we are wrong however someone please let us know and we'll happily remove the following. It is NOT or intention to violate this NDA or to make anyone upset. We are only trying to help others in the community by benefiting from the work we have done

By Ross Carlson and Joel Wampler

Quick Guide | Full Guide | Install OS X | Install Windows XP | Install CentOS Linux | Drivers

In this guide we'll take you through installing multiple operating systems on the Intel based Developer Macintosh machine. This guide was put together by Ross Carlson and Joel Wampler to hopefully get you through building a machine that can run every major operating system currently available. This guide takes about 2 hours total. Let's get started...

First there are a few things that you'll need:

• Decide what OSes you'll install
• Mac OS X Intel disk (the one that came with the Intel Mac)
• Windows XP SP2 CD (if you want XP - we tested with a already SP2'ed disc)
• Windows XP CD Key (obviously, just being safe...)
• CentOS 4 CD's (or your favorite distro - we got kernel panic's every time we tried Fedora Core 4 and CentOS worked great)
• CD Ejection Device (otherwise known as a paper clip - just in case...)

Notes:

• You're going to need a Linux install so you can use it's boot loader for your OS selection menu.
• We had major issues with Fedora Core 4. At first we thought it was an issue with HyperThreading support, and we did a "linux ht=off" at boot. This worked once but never again?!? Joel was also too lazy to make some Slackware CD's with SATA support so we just went with CentOS since we had it handy.
• Keep the CD Ejection Device handy - Apple thought it was a good idea to remove the button from the DVD drive so the only way to eject a disc if you need to is with the OS or the CD Ejection Device. So if you can't boot into an OS and you want to remove the CD you'll need that...

Quick Guide: - Return to Top
If you're like us and hate reading through pages of crap to get things done here is the quick version of what you'll need to do. We'll explain this step-by-step down below.

• Boot from the Mac OS X Install DVD
• Use the Disk Utility within the Installer to delete ALL partitions
• Use the drop down and select 3 partitions (if you're doing OSX/Windows/Linux) - YOU REALLY ONLY NEED A MAX OF 3!
• Change the size of the partitions as you desire (make sure to leave room for all your OSes)
• Set the first and third partition to "free space" - DO NOT FORMAT THEM!
• Set the second partition to Mac Journeled - name it "OS X" (or what you want)
• Write the partiton table
• Exit the Disk Utility
• Install OS X on the partition you created above (if you have more than 1 disk you did something wrong!)
• Once OS X is installed and working put in the Windows XP CD and reboot
• At boot make sure to hit a key so the machine boots from the XP CD
• Create an NTFS partition on the first empty partition - you'll see the other two - ignore them. The partition you'll create will be called "E:", don't worry...
• Exit the XP installer (AFTER you've created the partition - DO NOT proceed with setup).
• Restart XP Setup (remember to press enter on reboot)
• Now the first partition will be called C: - in

tpm: say hello to my little friend...

[Anonymous Coward]

per the article: Other Device: There is also one of the Trusted Computing chips on the board - Windows Update will install the driver for that... sse3 and tpm are the reasons that mac os x/x86 will not run on anything other than apple devkits right now. apple's ATSServer is not compiled for i386 - with good reason: so that the 'rosetta' ppc translator is required. oah750 is 'rosetta', which has hooks to run correctly only through the presence of said TPM. executing ppc binaries manually results in a segfault. no tpm, no rosetta, no mac os x.

Re:torrent link for eveyone else

[archer75]

That particlar torrent is bundled with a trojan.