PearPC 0.1.2 was released. Among other things it fixes a bug in the program that crashes MacOS if left idle. OSNews’ article with screenshots is here.
PearPC 0.1.2 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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…were are the performance improvements?
Aside from the fact that there are inherently limitations to how fast this can go, even perfectly tweaked, an architectural change to this application that would yield a performance gain is probably more of a 0.2 thing. As it is, 0.1.2 sounds more like a bugfix release.
Still getting:
Panic: We are hanging here
while trying to boot darwin. I know this isn’t a support thread, so I’m not about to post full details, but I’m wondering how everyone else made it work so easily. Only major changes I made in the config was upping the amount of memory I put towards the emulator. I think the normal is 128 if I recall, I changed it to 384 cause I’ve got enough… I’ve not tried going for the default. Maybe I’ll try that.
well, that seemed to work, but isn’t that dumb…
It worked perfectly for me, I borrowed an OS X CD from a company who use Apple’s in our Office building and tried it out. Although the installation took around 5 hours. It allowed me to play around a little with OS X, which makes me want to buy an Apple. (Now all I need to is some money 🙁 ).
well, that seemed to work, but isn’t that dumb…
No, it isn’t (well a little bit, maybe
). Somewhere on their forum they say that more than 128 MBRAM isn’t supported yet.
Is it possible for Transmeta to emulate the PPC architecture and embed it on their processors?
which makes me want to buy an Apple
You know, I could make some seriously bad jokes about this one
I think this PearPC thing could be usefull for Apple (unless of course it gets so advanced that can run OS X very fast).
It’s like giving a cut-down version os OS X to PC users, to lure them to the Mac side 😉
Maybe I just didn’t take a good enough look at the site. I didn’t see a link to forums on it. This might be why I never ended up reading about the 128MB limit. They should add a link on the left with all the other main links. Anyway, just because they have it and I looked it over doesn’t mean that it’s not dumb…. would you not agree that the memory allocation and general support for as much memory as someone can offer should be one of the first steps? I’d like to see that changed/fixed before Finder Crashes/Idle Crash’s etc…etc. I’d do it myself, but as of now I’m in the midst of burying my father who died earlier in the week and I’ve already got quite a bit of devotion to the iPod Linux project.
I thought this was going to be the direction that Transmeta was going originally. I figured that they’d pretty much write soft-chips for the most popular architectures available and make them easily switchable. It’s my understanding the have technology to update the software on the chip after market, so with that kind of abilities you could consistently have different architectures whenenver you wanted, hell maybe even add something of a small co processor that loaded and ran a Boot Manager type thing that allowed you to pick what architecture on startup. Heh… imagine that?
I asked the QEMU guys how fast their PowerPC emulation is (they have had PowerPC Linux working for a while) and they reckoned it is currently at 15 times slower, compared to the current PearPC’s 40 times slower. It just needs somebody to port the bits of PearPC that support Mac OS X to QEMU.
I’m not sure whether PPC Linux is also 40 times slower. They said that MDK PPC runs quite bearable, faster than OS X. So, in the end, QEMU and PearPC might not differ that much from eachother when it comes to Linux PPC emulation.
im running mine with the ram set to 384… not a single problem so far. and that was with release 0.1.1 so it is possible
Well, this is the email I am referring to:
——————————–
> Hi,
>
> With all the commotion surrounding PearPC and its ability to install
> Mac OS X, I was wondering what the rough speed of QMEU’s PowerPC
> system emulation? The PearPC JIT system runs at about 1/40th the speed
> of its host. Anybody have a rough idea how the current QEMU compares?
I made differents tests:
Linux kernel compilation and nbench.
I promise to put detailed benches on my page soon 🙂
My conclusion is:
the code I’m working on is equivalent to a 200 Mhz PPC on my amd64 3000+
(2Ghz).
Nbench gives 1/15 ratio, which seems coherent.
The CVS code is about two or three times slower because I do a lot of
context synchronisations that a real CPU won’t do and this makes context
switches very slow: this really slows down tests like “make olconfig” on
a Linux kernel: makes does a lot of forks.
—
J. Mayer <[email protected]>
Never organized
——————————–
Now, given the primary developer of PearPC says his JIT executor is about 1/40th the speed of the host (he plans to improve this) and it has been demonstrated that QEMU’s JIT executor is about 1/15th then I think my statement stands ok.
Ditto, only, took me a lot longer to install on my PIII 800…
I would definitely recommend these directions over the directions at pear pc:
http://www.emaculation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1102
You most assuredly do not need darwin!!!
You do need darwin. With the above tutorial, you just boot darwin from the OS X CD. You still need it.
Darwin is the kernel/console layer of Mac OS X. Installing OS X without it would be an excercise in futility.
Hey I posted on the previous pearpc story saying how I was excited to finally try OSX.
I installed 10.2, and at 800×600 it’s pretty fast. It’s nowhere near as fast as my native Windows XP, but feels more like a 300mhz-700mhz pc running windows 98 or 2000.
When I first saw OSX loading, I was very happy and excited. With so much hype, I thought I was about to witness something incredible. Like those dinosaurs who found the great valley.
Well, I haven’t installed any apps yet. But after playing with the OS itself, I’m quite disappointed. I mean it seems nice and all, but it feels incomplete. Perhaps 10.3 fills in the gaps, but in 10.2 it reminds me of Windows 3.11 days.
I suppose I’m used to the plethora of features everywhere in Windows XP. When I right-click somewhere I have tons of things to look at, when I view options/settings for basic OS apps and control panels there are tons of advanced settings for me to experiment with. Whereas OSX feels empty to me. Everything is under the hood, and the actual GUI feels like a plastic decal slapped over the engine. It doesn’t have much actual function, but looks pretty.
Maybe I’m just so newbie that I don’t know where to look and I’ll change my mind later.
The first things I noticed in terms of usability were: 1) the maximize button doesn’t maximize. It isn’t predictable what it will do and feels useless to me. 2) After I’ve closed applications by clicking the X in their window, I find they are still running and I have to File..Quit. 3) the dock shouldn’t move around so much. The windows taskbar might not be pretty, but my icon quick links stay in one place, and the only thing that moves are the open tasks.
That’s all for now. I’ll wait a bit longer, maybe try out 10.3, install some apps, and give it another chance before I make my final judgement.