Hell Has Frozen Over. Again.

Now that WinXp has landed on a Mac, Gates can finally conquer the one consumer platform that got away...
This is even better than OS X on x86 Processors, now Mac users can run bloated software and a hacker friendly OS on their iMacs. How many people are really going to try this?

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Cetra

This is exactly what I was going to ask. Getting Windows to run on Mac hardware is one thing, but getting functional drivers for all of the hardware devices is an entirely different matter. And if you plan on using it for gaming, it's not a matter of just making functional drivers, but full featured driver sets including the custom application layer software that is usually involved in controlling the hardware.

This is an unsupported project and you really are not dealing with an open source platform like you would be in developing drivers for a Nix platform.

Well since Macs use Ati or Nvidia based video cards, as long as the Windows boots and the soundcard works you should be able to run most games well. I'd love to see those iMacs run DOS or Win9x, THAT would be a real challenge (since EFI didn't even exist during Win9x's heyday).

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Cetra

I'm pretty sure the devices in Macs have a totally different memory addressing modes/structures, bus timings and interfacing opcodes even under the Intel architecture which is going to require a rewrite of most drivers. Remember, drivers run at the hardware level, not the kernel (OS) level. Installing WindowsXP on an iMac doesn't mean you'll be able to use WindowsXP drivers on the iMac.

Hmm, what drivers did the person who put WinXP on the iMac get to work? You know the primary system drivers (such as HDD, CD/DVD and some others) and the video card worked (since we saw a picture).

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Cetra

Basic read/write modes are standardized and allow basic functionality for the most part like VGA mode for video cards. However, advanced functionality of devices (burst DMA mode for HDDs, higher resolution 24-bit color for video cards, etc) require more advanced memory addressing modes which are not standardized across hardware platforms.

From what I saw, the video card was running in 16-32bit mode, it seemed to work just fine (VGA mode would look horrendusly awful in WinXP). Of course WinXP interfaces with the videocard better than previous versions can.
What video card do iMacs use?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?