dose anyone rember system 7 on windows

[geekybear]

it was a project apple was working on to port system 7 stuff to windows 3.1 i do beleave.i was woundering if anyone might know if i am right about this.

thanks

[Stephen Coates]

No, sorry. Havn't heard of it.

[thibault]

in fact, that was not a port of system 7 for windows but a system 7 for x86 computers... I heard it worked well but too late : windows 95 was there...

[PPC_Digger]

Just did a quick google search and read some:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/ ... 84,00.html
However, see this:
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2002/04/01.5.shtml
It came out on April 1st.

[MacOSX]

Just did a quick google search and read some:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/ ... 84,00.html
However, see this:
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2002/04/01.5.shtml
It came out on April 1st.

Is it true though?

[Borg_Will_Rule]

I bet it is. If Darwin can run on X86 hardware, then why can't Mac OS?

[PPC_Digger]

I bet it is. If Darwin can run on X86 hardware, then why can't Mac OS?

But you should remember that Darwin is the Mac OS X core, and not the classic Mac OS core. We are talking about system 7. But I believe Apple has made an x86 version of OSX and is keeping it in a safe for future use :D .

[willhart]

I'm sorry if I don't know anything about this, but would this mean that native Mac OS X applications would work fine if OS X was rebuilt for x86? I know that Windows NT 4.0 could run on PowerPC, but could it run Windows applications natively?

[PPC_Digger]

I'm sorry if I don't know anything about this, but would this mean that native Mac OS X applications would work fine if OS X was rebuilt for x86? I know that Windows NT 4.0 could run on PowerPC, but could it run Windows applications natively?

If apple wants standard (PPC) OSX apps to run on x86 OSX, they would have to include a PowerPC emulator in the OS (as M$ did with the PowerPC version - they included a 486 emulator - so most x86 windows apps could run).

[ShadowFox]

I believe the original poster was referring to some of Apple's experiments in the early 90s, where indeed there was some classic MacOS versions running on x86 hardware. The project was known as "Star Trek", and apparently got pretty far before getting canned.

The other possibility would be Apple's Rhapsody, essentially THE precursor to OSX, which did have a very functional developer release running on Intel hardware.

<edit> This page shows a flowchart towards OSX, and clearly Rhapsody Developer Release 2 is the direct and sole grandparent of the entire OSX line! The screenshots in the link above were of Rhapsody DR2 running on Intel hardware. Given that, I find it hard to believe there isn't a copy of OSX running on x86 hardware somewhere in Apple's chamber of secrets, especially if much of the underlying technology is already in place.


To answer willhart's question, native PowerPC OSX applications would not run on OSX for x86. Even though the operating system would be close to the same, the hardware backing them isn't, so an x86 processor wouldn't understand how to run PowerPC applications, and vice-versa. The applications would have to be recompiled, or in some cases, rewritten to run on differant hardware.

[zuc]

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/ ... 84,00.html

This link is an april joke.
It was written on April 1st, 2002

I don't belive this will ever happen. If apple really is able to create a MacOS X for x86 they'd have already doen it.

The second link shows this:
"Every couple of years, rumors spread that Apple is working on a version of the Mac OS for the x86 platform. It happens with such regularity you could almost set your watch by it."

It's a rumor and will stay one though a OS X for x86 would be nice.

[PPC_Digger]

If apple really is able to create a MacOS X for x86 they'd have already doen it.

It's not whether they are able to, it's whether they want to, since it would really kill their hardware business.

It's a rumor and will stay one though a OS X for x86 would be nice.

If you really want it, wait for SoftPear to come out.

[Marc]

MacOS will only run on the x86 arch if Apple's hardware division completely folds and the OS is the only card they have up their sleeve. Even this would be very difficult for Apple.

For now, lets all just wait for CherryOS

[willhart]

haha, very funny. But Mac is not going anywhere. Think of it like this: a dual 2.4ghz G5 is efficiently equivalent to a dual 4.8ghz P4. PowerPC is pretty damned powerful.

[PPC_Digger]

haha, very funny. But Mac is not going anywhere. Think of it like this: a dual 2.4ghz G5 is efficiently equivalent to a dual 4.8ghz P4. PowerPC is pretty damned powerful.

I remember the times when people would compare G3's to Pentium-4's and laugh: 2.8 GHz P4 is equal to a 850 MHz G3 in Photoshop stuff.

[bonehead]

haha, very funny. But Mac is not going anywhere. Think of it like this: a dual 2.4ghz G5 is efficiently equivalent to a dual 4.8ghz P4. PowerPC is pretty damned powerful.

No... A dual G5 2.4 is "efficiently equivalent" to a SINGLE P4 4.4 - 4.8 Ghz, should such a beast exist (impossible to say exactly what the perf. on such an imaginary chip would be), or nearly the same speed as a DUAL Opteron 248 (2.2 Ghz)... unless you only use a synthetic benchmark (bad thing to do), or say, Bryce 5, as your benchmark.

Don't forget that the dual Opteron run MUCH cooler than the G5... especially if you use the the 90nm Opteron..

[bonehead]

I remember the times when people would compare G3's to Pentium-4's and laugh: 2.8 GHz P4 is equal to a 850 MHz G3 in Photoshop stuff.

And that's the mistake... Assuming that being the best in a handful of Photoshop filters actually matter. That only showed that an un-optimized filter runs slower than an aggressively optimized one. One that exposed one of the largest weaknesses of the P4, it's horribly deep pipeline. Nothing you can't code around, but, the point is, the filters in question didn't.

[PPC_Digger]

I remember the times when people would compare G3's to Pentium-4's and laugh: 2.8 GHz P4 is equal to a 850 MHz G3 in Photoshop stuff.

And that's the mistake... Assuming that being the best in a handful of Photoshop filters actually matter. That only showed that an un-optimized filter runs slower than an aggressively optimized one. One that exposed one of the largest weaknesses of the P4, it's horribly deep pipeline. Nothing you can't code around, but, the point is, the filters in question didn't.

That's it: The P4 was designed to impress with high GHz, not with performance. I am ashamed it was designed in my country (just like the Pentium-M and the Pentium MMX).

[willhart]

If hertz are so relative in processors, why don't we use a different system?

[bonehead]

If hertz are so relative in processors, why don't we use a different system?

You'll notice that most CPU manufacturers are. They're getting close to hitting the limit in Mhz, and need to start looking at other architectural changes, so they're starting to put less emphasis on the speed.

That's it: The P4 was designed to impress with high GHz, not with performance. I am ashamed it was designed in my country (just like the Pentium-M and the Pentium MMX).

The Pentium M is based of the old P-Pro architecture. Really not a bad design. Definitely more a step forward than the P4.

Yes, the P4 was designed to wow with a high clock and serve as a space heater (funny that they now cant get it to the 4Ghz it was originally targeted for). But just because one x86 processor was less than it could have been doesn't automatically give the PPC a free ride. Even with all it's short comings, the P4 has been able to compete well against the AMD 64 and PPC in terms of performance value. (not performance per clock, but performance per buck).

[PPC_Digger]

If hertz are so relative in processors, why don't we use a different system?

You'll notice that most CPU manufacturers are. They're getting close to hitting the limit in Mhz, and need to start looking at other architectural changes, so they're starting to put less emphasis on the speed.

Why aren't they use MIPS or MFLOPS? Because they know IBM Power's and PowerPC's can smash them on mathemathical operations.

That's it: The P4 was designed to impress with high GHz, not with performance. I am ashamed it was designed in my country (just like the Pentium-M and the Pentium MMX).

The Pentium M is based of the old P-Pro architecture. Really not a bad design. Definitely more a step forward than the P4.

Yes, the P4 was designed to wow with a high clock and serve as a space heater (funny that they now cant get it to the 4Ghz it was originally targeted for). But just because one x86 processor was less than it could have been doesn't automatically give the PPC a free ride. Even with all it's short comings, the P4 has been able to compete well against the AMD 64 and PPC in terms of performance value. (not performance per clock, but performance per buck).

The P-Pro architecture is much better than the P4 architecture. See this:
When the first P4's came out, the fastest model was 1.5GHz, while the fastest P3 on that time was 1 GHz. The fastest P3 was faster on cartain operations than the fastest P4 of the time (of course not on SSE2 operations, which the P3 couldn't do).
And the P4 doesn't give more performance per buck than an Athlon, it, and other Intel processors never did against AMD ones.

[bonehead]

The P-Pro architecture is much better than the P4 architecture. See this:

Isn't that what I just said?

When the first P4's came out, the fastest model was 1.5GHz, while the fastest P3 on that time was 1 GHz. The fastest P3 was faster on cartain operations than the fastest P4 of the time (of course not on SSE2 operations, which the P3 couldn't do).

Yep. Was a pretty big slap in the face for Intel. However, the P-Po had much criticism when it first got its start. It was slower on "legacy" applications than the old Pentium.. Intel was right that time, however. Legacy apps ran fast enough, and pushing optimizations that helped applications using the more modern instructions won out.

And the P4 doesn't give more performance per buck than an Athlon, it, and other Intel processors never did against AMD ones.

Actually, Intel has been competitive in the mid to high end workstation segment. Only for a short period while they tweaked the P4 after its initial launch, and then again just recently, has their ability to keep pace in the high-end slipped from their hands. This isn't to say their designs have always been the most elegant, but they have been very competitive. Video production/compression is still a very strong area for the P4. - However, if you start to factor power consumption and heat into the equation, the P4 will fall far behind.

For low end, Intel has been able to saturate the market. May not be the best performance, but the Celeron (castrated P4) does what most people need it to do, and they can be had pretty cheap.

It's really quite amazing how well Intel was able to do with such a bad design. Any other chip company just wouldn't have been able to keep the steam.

[robojam]

It's really quite amazing how well Intel was able to do with such a bad design.

Ditto Microsoft...

[bonehead]

Ditto Microsoft...

Hehe... Exactly.

Why aren't they use MIPS or MFLOPS? Because they know IBM Power's and PowerPC's can smash them on mathemathical operations.

Actually it's, because those are bogus synthetic benchmarks. They give little indication how the CPU will do in a real world situation. Also, I wouldn't call 22% better floating point performance per clock "smashing"... seeing as the P4 is available at much higher clocks. It's in dual+ configurations where the G5 and Opteron are able to pull well ahead of the P4. The Xeon's FSB is just too congested and, again, its deep pipeline costs too many cycles when dealing with cache coherency in SMP - even with its superb branch prediction.

[mike]

I bet it is. If Darwin can run on X86 hardware, then why can't Mac OS?

But you should remember that Darwin is the Mac OS X core, and not the classic Mac OS core. We are talking about system 7. But I believe Apple has made an x86 version of OSX and is keeping it in a safe for future use :D .

Apple DID make an x86 version of osx... It was called rhapsody.... it's floating around, and i managed to get my hands on it. It's not much of anything other than a NEXT like interface, but it is the mac osx core.

On a side note, Microsoft made windows NT for powerpc