Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Windows XP on Intel Mac Confirmed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what-do-you-want-to-do-tonight-pinky dept.

niemassacre writes "According to winxponmac.com, the contest has been won - nearly $14k to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17" iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon." Poit! Congratulations to narf.

9 of 627 comments (clear)

  1. Mirror of the movie by jmke · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's link to the XP on MAC video from a site which can handle a /. http://youtube.com/watch?v=nzH6OFpXgzI

  2. be kind to their server by thelost · · Score: 4, Informative

    use the coral caches. I can't believe they weren't coralised in the main post

    forum
    http://forum.osx86project.org.nyud.net:8080/index. php?showtopic=11731
    Video:
    http://www.projectosx86.org.nyud.net:8080/winonmac .mov

    --
    Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
  3. Re:Why? by slantyyz · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's actually called DarWINE and it's not quite at the level of maturity you see in the Linux world. Codeweavers says they're working on a version of Crossover Office for the Mac, but they haven't posted any news about it recently.

    Crossover Office is pretty good on Linux. I'd rather use something like Wine (provided it worked on 100% of the stuff I need -- wishful thinking) than VMWare. Having said that, I'd rather use VMWare than dual boot.

  4. from macrumors by ClassicComposer · · Score: 5, Informative
    Since it's won now, I guess I can talk. The install requires a Windows XP PC, with which Windows is already installed. From here you use Nero Burning ROM to mix files from your XP SP2 CD, copy them to a new project, and add in some $OEM$ files and folders, and fix some of the files in i386. From here, you use xom.efi (which is the bootloader), and bless it in Terminal. Once it's blessed on startup you get a pretty nice selector, and you choose Windows. From here the CSM layer pauses for 2.5 Minutes while it does whatever its doing. Then you'll get into Windows Setup.

    I should also mention at this time, you cannot reboot Windows. You need to shutdown. If you attempt rebooting it will hang at Windows is Shutting Down screen.
    from mac forums
  5. Re:Irony by adam1101 · · Score: 4, Informative

    In the *STEP days, Windows NT ran on MIPS, Alpha, PPC, x86, and early versions even SPARC. This was drastically reduced with the NT -> 2K transition, but then again, so was *STEP -> OS X. Nowadays, NT runs on x86-32, x86-64 and Itanium, while *STEP runs on x86-32 and PPC, so it's pretty much a wash.

  6. Some points to bear in mind: by Phil+John · · Score: 4, Informative

    Windows NT was built from the beginning to run on multiple processors, it had a very advanced hardware abstraction layer built in. The other versions never sold very well and there were problems with application support (e.g. people targetting multiple processor arch's). Apple has clevery overcome this obstacle by including "Rosetta" from the start, something similar existed for NT Alpha called FX!32 but I suspect by the time it was released it was too little too late to save the OS.

    I'm sure that the HAL is in place in NT derived operating systems to this day and if MS were so inclined they could do another port. However, there's no real business need (as there is for Apple with their transition) so it's never been done. They target the largest installed hardware base.

    The issue with getting Windows on Macintel to work is that EFI is so fundamentally different to the traditional BIOS XP expects that you require either the source code of the OS kernel to make it work or have to, as has been done here, provide essentially a bios emulator. This is nothing to do with portability or HAL's, it's about having access to the fundamentally low-level parts of the operating system, something people outside MS don't have.

    --
    I am NaN
  7. explanation (riposte) by mnemonic_ · · Score: 5, Informative
    Colin has received a solution from narf2006 and is currently testing it. Meanwhile, narf2006 has revealed some details on his method; he patched the Windows XP kernel to get VGA working, and wrote a custom Compatibility Support Module (CSM) to allow booting XP from EFI.

    According to Intel documentation, using a CSM that plugs into the EFI framework should allow for booting BIOS-based operating systems:
    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.
    In the words of Jim Cramer, "booyah."
  8. Very possible by Temujin_12 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is very possible to setup a 3-boot situation seeing how Linux Beat Windows to Intel iMac.

    --
    Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
  9. Re:Can't play the video by uzor · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can d/l quicktime separate from iTunes...you just need to look a little harder for the link. Try this: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone .html . the other option that I have used if you don't want iTunes, is to open the iTunes installer with Winrar, and just extract the quicktime installer from it. The quicktime installer is called separately from the iTunes installer, so extracting/running it separate from the rest of the app works just fine.