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Windows Vista Beta Running on a PPC Mac
goombah99 writes "Macosxhints is giving a set of tips that let any Mac user boot Windows Vista on a Mac. In this case, it's not a native Intel boot but rather VirtualPC running on a PPC G5 Mac. Thus Vista and Mac OS X can run concurrently. There are no extravagant hacks needed, just a matter of finding the right set of configurations to let VirtualPC present the proper disk images for mounting and BIOS settings to the installer. This bodes well for native installs onto the Intel Mac." Actually, there have been successful (though not glitch-free) installs of beta versions of Vista on Intel Macs for a few months now. Here's a report from Hans Verbeeck (Developer Evangelist for Microsoft EMEA) on putting Vista Beta 2 on a MacBook Pro.
That poor mac!
VPC emulates a traditional PC with a BIOS. An Intel Mac is an entirely different beast. Getting Vista to boot in VPC is no more difficult than getting it to boot on a generic "white box" pc, and has just as much relevance to the Intel Mac. That is, none at all.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
I did this a few days ago on my 1.67GHz PowerBook G4. Yes I am insane.
All you need to do is ensure the RAM setting is at 512MB otherwise the installer refuses to work. Then just before booting hit the delete key and enable APCI in the BIOS. Once installed, you can lower the RAM setting to something like 256MB. You also need patience because it took almost four hours to install (although it only asks for information at the beginning and end.)
It's extremely pointless though. For starters the Aero Glass interface won't work because the best graphics card Virtual PC emulates is a 16MB generic VGA card.
The only thing I learnt is that Microsoft have created an installer that requires 512MB to merely display a fake Aero Glass interface, you get seemingly random error codes with less RAM. Vista seems to use about 300MB once booted.