XP booted on the intel iMac

Someone finally got it done. Check out the video for all the jittery home movie goodness:

http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/videos/narf2006_xp_mac.mov


Details are vauge at this point as the guy that did it is submitting this to win the ~$12,000 prize and is not giving away the procedure yet. Has said that the procedure involved emulating bios with the EFI and hacking the XP kernel to allow VGA during the install process. Nothing yet about if it can dual boot, but that is one of the requirments for the contest. Anyways, I guess we'll get to see the procedure soon.

And yes, I know that many of you don't want windows touching your pristine Mac and are completely baffled as to why anyone wants to do this, but we can take that as a given, and there is no need to comment about it twenty or thirty times

It's interesting, but with the effort involved, I don't see white boxes with green landscapes (or "aero glass", bah) anytime soon.

It's ok to use it if you really need it, but there's usually alaways an alternative. I'm happy I don't need it. My mac is fine and works. No meesing with MY Mac, others are free to exercise will.

pretty cool, its interesting how determined some people are to get windows on the mac and I respect them for that, I am sure its pretty tough to figure that out!

I find it strange that so many hardcore mac users are against this! If a non-destructive solution to run windows and mac alongside each other is presented, it'd be foolish not to use it. Most of the opponents of dual booting a mac strangely "agree" with using virtual pc! I find this totally hypocritical. Run windows natively (and legally i might add) for the game or occasional better windows program (ie. quickbooks). I cant wait!

I really respect the person who finally did it, but even if I had the choice of doing it, I never would. I can see the point made by TexasMeat, but me personally, I have no use for Windows.

pretty odd, but anyone with some brains and the knowledge i guess he figured it out. but why put windows on a mac, i went to mac to get away from all the BS with microsoft. Oh well... that was a fast install of windows anyways.

I think the ability to dualboot windows and OSX would increase the userbase of apple computers. I have many friends (we are all seniors in highschool) who aren't buying macs because of some of the software that their colleges need them to use that are PC only. I personally would like to run them along side each other because there are programs that I have on PC which aren't available to mac, and don't have mac equivlents.

Giving us the ability to run windows on a mac would be a great step forward for apple in my opinion.

Smesh

maz94protege said:

but why put windows on a mac, i went to mac to get away from all the BS with microsoft. Oh well... that was a fast install of windows anyways.

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It is absolutely impossible to discuss this subject with out someone posting the above. neye: Slashdot, engadget, OSX86 project, here, or what have you, someone will always comment "Why would you want to do that?"

The answer-- Because it's there. Hows that?

Kind of like the Linux people working to get Linux running on every new thing that comes along. Oh, and the $12K might have had a little something to do with it.

dan828 said:

It is absolutely impossible to discuss this subject with out someone posting the above. neye: Slashdot, engadget, OSX86 project, here, or what have you, someone will always comment "Why would you want to do that?"

The answer-- Because it's there. Hows that?

Kind of like the Linux people working to get Linux running on every new thing that comes along. Oh, and the $12K might have had a little something to do with it.

Click to expand...

$13k, I donated a few bucks to bump up the pot this morning

How does anybody know that the person is using an intel mac, if they are using imac g5 isight, you can have windows running on virtual pc look:




(click to get full image)

Until someone comes up with a solution that makes doing it easy, I don't really care. If I could install XP on an intel mac, I would be very tempted to get a MacBook though.

mynameis said:

Until someone comes up with a solution that makes doing it easy, I don't really care. If I could install XP on an intel mac, I would be very tempted to get a MacBook though.

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Posts over at Onmac.net say that the solution works with the Mac Book Pro and the 17-inch iMac currently. They are tweaking it to get it to work on the new mini and the 20-inch iMacs. Procedure should be posted any time. Probably by the time your new Mac Book Arrives anyway.

http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=72

I got my Intel Mac to RECOGNIZE the CD in QEMU, but unfortunately it said something like I was trying to run 64-bit os's on a 32-bit machine...

can anyone help me out here?

oh and btw u sure that vid isn't a G5 iMac?

this is awesome!! its really cool how can someone think of brilliant things like this! :headphone

Its amazing how many Mac people are interested in Windows on a Mac.

awesome! probabaly a lack of driver support, but then you could have the ultimate machine, one that boots OSX, Linux and Windows.....ub3r lee7

pscl227 said:

awesome! probabaly a lack of driver support, but then you could have the ultimate machine, one that boots OSX, Linux and Windows.....ub3r lee7

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I think driver support should be fine. Apple uses pretty standard components. There are PC laptops with almost the exact specs of the Mac Book Pro.

You're right though, a triple booting Mac Book Pro would be great.

The contest site now says that the prize has been won and that it is working on all current intel Macs. The site forums are down because this got reported on slashdot and the servers couldn't handle the load.

The procedure has been posted.

http://www.winxponmac.com/download/

Makes me wish that I had an intel Mac to play with. I looked through the install instructions and it appears to be doable in an hour or two. It doesn't look all that complex, but does require making a patched XP install disk.

Anybody with a new mac going to try it?

Texasmeat said:

I find it strange that so many hardcore mac users are against this! If a non-destructive solution to run windows and mac alongside each other is presented, it'd be foolish not to use it. Most of the opponents of dual booting a mac strangely "agree" with using virtual pc! I find this totally hypocritical. Run windows natively (and legally i might add) for the game or occasional better windows program (ie. quickbooks). I cant wait!

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I have never found any dedicated Mac Fanatics who are NOT hypocrites, as a general rule. It is certianly not surprising to me that some would be.

However, this will NOT be a "legal" install of XP. To be "legal", no changes to the Install files must be made. The XP EULA specifically makes backward engineering of the XP Installation disk a violation of the XP EULA.

orthocross said:

================================================
I have never found any dedicated Mac Fanatics who are NOT hypocrites, as a general rule. It is certianly not surprising to me that some would be.

However, this will NOT be a "legal" install of XP. To be "legal", no changes to the Install files must be made. The XP EULA specifically makes backward engineering of the XP Installation disk a violation of the XP EULA.

Click to expand...

Make sure before you try and sound like you know what you're talking about to read up on the actual contents of the EULA for Windows XP.