This document describes all my triumphs and failures in the PC emulation world. I will be updating it from time to time and will post on my web page when I have. it reads in chronological order so new info will be at the bottom. Feel free to copy, distribute, erase, change, corrupt, whatever to this info. Just don't tell anyone it came from me if the info is changed! Virtual PC problems 8/11/97 I have been having a serious problem trying to load a saved game in the game DIG. Everytime I select a saved game I get an error "ALLOCATING ILLEGAL GLOB TYPE (1024) NUM 2130706432" sometimes the numbers are different but the message is always the same. For kicks I tried saving a game at work on a real PC and loading it at home. It worked with no problem. I then tried saving a game at home and loading it at work. It crashed bad. I could not see what the error was because windows recovered from DOS very quick. VPC comes with Win95b and the computer at work has Win95a and no sound card. I tried the game with the sound card disabled at home but it still did not work. I can't even get the game to run at home without using a DOS boot disk that it made. I can run it under Windows at work with no problem. Connectix has told me to try installing an older version of DOS only and see what happens. I will update all of you as soon as I try it. First I have to find an old version of DOS. Virtual PC problems update: Well I am still not able to load a saved game in the game DIG. I have tried all sorts of different setups even using a DOS 6.2 boot floppy. I still get either Allocating Illegal Glob or Illegal ID in savegame errors. Lucasarts has told me that their programs do not act correct under emulation. How they had the time to test VPC so fast is beyond me. I assumed they were talking about Softwindows from Insignia. I guess they were right do to all my problems. On a lighter note, I tried Hasbros Scrabble and it runs flawlessly. I can even save and load games back. (The speed seems a little bit faster than my DUO which has a 33Mhz 68030. Some of you may think this is slow but I can play games like the Daedalus Encounter and Buried in Time at full screen with no problem. Even Marathon 2 runs OK on it.) Anyway the only things that run real slow on VPC are movie clips and games that won't run in DOS but need Win95. VPC and load game problems in DIG update 9/5/97: Well I gave up trying to get DIG to load a game. So now I am playing a new game called Zork Nemesis. It installed fine under Win95 and I can even save and load games with no problems. It is awfully slow though. spoken words are often repeated and the screen scrolling is almost intolarable. I decided to load the DOS version and after getting an hours worth of install failures it finally worked. This is much better, movies and speech match perfectly and screen scrolling is like a 33Mhz 68040. I can hang with this. VPC is nice but it seems that its best use is for DOS games unless you have a very fast MAC. I just saw that MacWarehouse has Real PC from Insignia advertised for about $80. It boasts better compatibility and faster emulating. But be prepared to pay more as it only comes with DOS 6.22, no windows. Another contender is a program called Blue Lable. It boasts the fastest speeds up to 1/2 of the Mhz of your PPC (ie: 100Mhz PPC = 50Mhz Pentuim). It will do this by allowing you to boot either the MAC or the PC but not both at the same time. I don't know if you will be able to read the MAC HD while running the PC but I know drag-and-drop is out of the question. Get info on all of these from www.emulation.com. Just scan half way down until you see a selection of emulators and select IBM. Updated 9/27/97: Virtual PC update: Connectix has updated VPC to version 1.0.1. (http://www.connectix.com/html/cvp_updates.html) It has a lot of changes and bug fixes. One change is an addition of a FM sound mute feature in the preferences. Connectix says this will significantly increase the speed of some games. They also bundled a DOS mouse driver for those of you like me that want to play DOS games. I will let you know if it fixes my problem with DIG not being able to load a saved game. I read somewhere that they are also coming out with VirtualDOS which will be in direct competition with RealPC from Insignia. I read that it will sell for $69. Updated 9/27/97: Softwindows95 4.0: I tried a trial version of Softwindows 95 and It seems to be about as good as VPC. The speed in windows95 does look a little faster but VPC is much faster in DOS. I tested the DIG on softwindows and guess what, it worked! WOW! I can save and load games with no problem. Only one drawback, no sound. It seems that DIG cannot find a sound card on my system. Sure enough, Softwindows is using some sort of special program instead of emulating a sound card like VPC so you only get sound under windows. RealPC from Insignia fixes this problem. I may have to try that unless one of you knows how to get sound in DOS for Softwindows 95 4.0 Updated 9/29/97: VPC update 1.0.1 does not help my DIG problem: Well I just installed the update and the install went smooth for me (MacFixIt had reported that some people were having serious problems that required a complete reinstall of VPC then run the update). The first thing I tried was to load a saved game in DIG and I got the same problem. Oh Well, maybe on the next update. Softwindows report update 10/8/97: I still have not found away to get sound under DOS, but Insignias claims of better performance over Virtual PC seem to be correct. My friend has a StarMax 3000/160 and she had nothing but problems with VPC. Movies would not play and screen redraws were completely unacceptable. I know that connectix does say that you need at least a 603e 180 system to run windows 95 but all the benchmarks put the Starmax 160 ahead of Apples 6400 180 when both are right out of the box so we thought that since it runs OK on my system that it would on hers. NOPE! on the other hand Sofwindows 95 4.0 is flying on her StarMax. She has been trying all sorts of multimedia CD's all night and says she had no problems with any of them. I did not get a chance to try the VPC update 1.0.1 on here system as VPC had become so corrupted that we just trashed it. Virtual PC game speed-up tip from MacFixIt 10/10/97:According to Patrick Debaumarche: "Some Win95 games running under Virtual PC can show some very unexpected slowdowns when you click the mouse or use the keyboard. It's sometimes so bad it can take even minutes for the software to register your input. I found a very simple solution to remedy to these slowdowns: Go to the Win95 Display Control panel and, in the properties, set the Graphic hardware acceleration to anything but Full (I recommend one step less, where Windows advises you that it may cure mouse/keyboard problems)." Fastest Performance possible out of Virtual PC or Softwindows 11/12/97: I just read a letter posted at MacIntouch that states there is a way to about double the speed of PC emulation on the MAC. Below is the letter: VirtualPC Speedup Salman Saeed letter to MacPCI-L, November 10, 1997. If you need to REALLY run Windows 95 at it's fastest on your Mac, do this with VPC: On another partition create a bare bones System (sorry, without another partition, this will not work), remove EVERY extension except the Appearance extension, and every control panel except the Appearance control panel. Then move the VPC preference file into the new System's preference folder. Also move the VirtualPC app itself into the System folder. Remove the Finder from the System, throw it in the trash and delete it. Use ResEdit to change the VPC app's 'creator' code to MACS and 'type' to FNDR. Then rename VirtualPC to Finder. Then reboot holding down "Shift-Option-Command-Delete", this will force your Mac to boot from a System other than your startup disk. DO NOT CHANGE THE STARTUP DISK IN THE STARTUP DISK CONTROL PANEL! If you do, it will be murder trying to get it to boot back to MacOS. Now what you have is Windows 95 booting instead of MacOS, and the performance increase is more than double! Alas, you will not be able to use the MacOS while you are running VPC like this, but you WILL still be able to share ANY Mac folder!, but if you NEED to use Win95, this is the best way to do it! Now to get back to the MacOS, just quite VPC as normal, saving it where you left off,and then once it has saved the data to the disc, you just force-restart"Control-Command-PowerKey", and your Mac will safely boot back to MacOS. BTW, all networking is STILL available from the PC using it this way, it's great! I tried it and it does work! I don't know about doubling the speed but it sure does improve it. By the way this trick will work with any of the PC emulator software on the market. I tried it with both Virtual PC and Softwindows95 4.0 and both ran fine. I assume you could even do this to run games on slower computers. Worth a try! Although I did run into a few snags. He states that you can remove all extensions (except the Appearance in OS 8.0) and it will run fine. This is not entirely true. I needed to leave in the Apple CD-ROM extension or I could not use CD's under Windows. Also I read in the manuals that both emulators use Quicktime for boosting sound and graphics. If you remove these then that will suffer under Windows. He also says that he can access the network without any networking extensions loaded. I did not try this but I don't believe him. I bet you need to keep all the OpenTransport extension loaded. I also left in my ATI VR card extensions to get the graphics acceleration from it and Speed Doubler to get its boost. NOTE: any control panel you leave in will not be accessible once you have booted this modified system so if you need to make any adjustments you will have to put in a real FINDER and restart from this system. Also when making a partition or using another drive for this modified system folder make sure its the next drive or partition in line to the normal boot drive. if you have multiple system folders as I do, then you will not be able to use the key combination he says to boot with. Use the second partition of your normal boot drive if you have multiple running on it. Use the drive with the highest SCSI# (ie:6-->0) other than your normal boot drive and the first partition on it if it has multiple partitions. If you goto your Startup Disk control panel, it will list the drives in the order in which it would recognize them. make sure if using more than 2 system folders that the drive listed second is the modified system for running the PC emulater. One more thing, In Virtual PC if you choose shutdown it will just reboot because its like force quitting the finder. In Softwindows 4.0 it will give you a type 41 error which is a finder error. You need to either use the save session in VPC or use the Turbo Start in Softwindows and then hit the MAC restart key combo. You can also do this trick without making another system folder but it will be lenghty getting your mac back as he states. First, use the extension manager control panel to remove all extensions you want off. Second, remove the finder from it but do not trash it. Store it in another folder. Third, move your emulator app renamed to finder into your system folder then reboot. Now when your done using the PC you must either insert a MAC CD bootable disk or a floppy DiskTools disk and use the key combo to restart the MAC (remember to hold the "C" key if using a CD). Once you have booted you will need to remove the modified finder and replace your original finder. Make sure to place the modified finder in another folder. Now you can either shutdown or restart to your normal MAC system. It's some work but if you need the speed, it's worth it! Fastest PC emulation update 11/13/97: I just read another response at MacIntouch about speeding up PC emulation software. This method is much easier then what I mentioned above. You can create an Apple script to tell the Finder to quit as you launch your PC emulator app. When your done, the finder will reload and all is back to normal. This is much easier then creating all that mess I mentioned above. You can also use the Extension manager to leave on only the crucial extensions to run VirtualPC or Softwindows and reboot (Apple Script and Apple Script Lib being 2 of them). then click on your Apple script app and now your PC app will launch and the Finder will quit and you should have the same speed benefits as the other way creates. Below is a sample script for VirtualPC. Yours will vary only in the names of the folders and disk that VirtualPC resides in. You can substitute Softwindows name for VirtualPC to get that to work. If you need any help just email me: tell application "Finder" activate select file "Virtual PCª" of folder "Virtual PC Ä" of disk "PC Emulation SCSI" open selection end tell tell application "Finder" quit end tell Updated 1/6/98 Virtual PC 2.0: SAN MATEO, Calif., January 2, 1997 -- Connectix Corporation, maker of RAM Doubler and Speed Doubler, today announces Connectix Virtual PC 2.0.Virtual PC 2.0 is 25-40% faster than version 1.0*, taking full advantage of Apple's OS8 and the new Power Macintosh G3 line. Version 2.0 will begin shipping in February and will be available in two versions: with Windows 95 pre-installed for an estimated street price of $149 or with PC DOS pre-installed for an estimated street price of $49.Virtual PC 1.0 with Windows 3.11 has an estimated street price of $99 ($149 minus $50 rebate**, starting in February). Upgrade pricing for 2.0, from previous versions of Virtual PC, has not been set at this time, however, it is expected to be below $50. Customers who purchase Virtual PC 1.0 or 1.0.1 on or after January 1, 1998 are eligible for a free 2.0 upgrade (does not include shipping and handling). I wonder if it will fix the Problem I have been having with the game DIG? Updated 1/12/98 Softwindows 95 5.0: Insignia has just updated Softwindows to include the features found in RealPC. Namely the ability to have sound in DOS, MMX compatibility, mouse clicking in DOS to launch apps, and a speed boost. I am going to be getting RealPC shortly and will have a review on it. Hopefully it will not have the problem of causing the game DIG to crash when loading a saved game as Virtual PC does. RealPC solves my crashing problem in the game DIG 3/5/98: I just installed RealPC 1.0 and as I suspected it can save and load my games in DIG with no errors. YIPPY! Plus it has sound in DOS so I can hear my games unlike Softwindows95 4.0 (this is fixed in version 5.0 or SW95). It does seem slower then SW95 4.0 did but there is an update to version 1.0.2. I am having trouble downloading it because I keep getting an attempt to get it failed error. I have notified Insignia and am waiting for a reply. RealPC 1.0.2 update 3/13/98: I never got a reply from Insignia about my downloading problems but I was able to download it yesturday. It made a big speed improvment on my system. I was able to play the DIG with very minimal sound choppings with my full extension set running! Now this is what I call playable performance. I will try installing Windows 95 into it shortly. RealPC 1.0.3 update 3/29/98: well they just updated it again. I have not tried it yet but when I do I will post the info here. RealPC Tips Web page: Mike from xlr8yourmac.com has added a nice tips and tricks page to his web site. here is the address http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/realpctips.html It is small now but should get larger soon. Updated 4/5/98 Installation of Windows95 on RealPC 1.0.3: I just installed Windows to see how fast it would be. the install took a little over an hour. man does it ask a lot of questions compared to a Mac OS install! everything went fine with no issues. the speed of Windows95 is rather slow. Softwindows95 4.0 and Virtual PC 1.0 seemed much faster in Windows. I haven't tried and Windows programs yet to see how fast they are. I will get to this soon. Updated 4/15/98 Speed of RealPC 1.0.3 verses VirtualPC 2.0: I have not gotten VPC 2.0 yet but I have read on Accellerate Your Mac a few days ago that one person with an ultra fast Power Computing machine with a G3 upgrade ran bytemark tests and says that VPC is twice as fast as RealPC. I can believe this as I noticed the game DIG which has been my benchmark game for all the emulators I used was faster in VPC 1.0 then RealPC 1.0.3. It was even fast in Softwindows95 4.0 then RealPC. The main slowdown seems to be the mouse. You must select Emulated Mouse in the preferences or you can't use the mouse for DOS games. When I get VPC 2.0 I will do my own testing and report back my findings. The main reason I tried RealPC though was that VPC could not play a saved game from DIG. It always locked up the emulator. RealPC and Softwindows both can play saved games but SW95 could not play sound in DOS until version 5.0 was released. 9/21/98 Using ZIP disks with PC emulation software: Hector wrote asking how to get a ZIP disk to work with VPC. I don't think it can be done but it will work (with a few annoyances) with RealPC. Here is his letter with my response. << WOULD YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW HOW TO ACTIVATE THE SCSI BUS (EXTERNAL SCSI BUS) IN WIN95 RUNNING UNDER VPC 2.0? I HAVE A ZIP DRIVE ATTACHED TO MY EXTERNAL SCSI BUS ON THE MAC AND I WANT TO BE ABLE TO ACCESS IT IN WIN95, BUT CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO LOAD IN DRIVERS FOR THE SCSI CONTROLLER? ANY IDEAS? HECTOR>> From what I understand, you can't! I think if you goto Connectix's web site and read the FAQ (or maybe even in the readme that came with VPC) you have to set the ZIP up as a shared folder. You can't access it directly. Now with that said, I was able to get my zip to work on RealPC so it might work on VPC? 1st I went to add new hardware. then I choose NO do not find new hardware automatically. then I chose SCSI. then It came up with the Insignia SCSI driver (this will only work if VPC has their own special SCSI driver). I selected the insignia driver and then continued following the rest of the questions. Now that the SCSI driver was installed I could start the ZIP install. 1st you need to turn PC Exchange OFF in Apples control panel. Then with Win95 running, insert the Win95 ZIP install floppy and insert your ZIP TOOLS disk with the Win95 stuff still on it (you might have to format a ZIP in PC DOS first on the Mac side and then copy the folder "Win95stuff" over to it. I had trouble using the dual format TOOLS disk that comes with the ZIP drive). Open the floppy and double click on "setup.exe" (the exe probably won't show but if your familiar with Win95 then you'll know what the setup installer icon looks like. You can click on view in the menu, then select options, and then click on the view tab. Now select View All and you'll see the setup.exe). Follow the install wizard instructions and it should work from here. If the wizard still says that it can't find any Iomega adaptors then your out of luck. I do have a couple of problems that arose after doing this. in My Computer, I now have 2 drive letters for my CD-ROM. I don't know how to get rid of the 2nd one that was taken over by the ZIP install. It works fine and I can run CD's from either icon but it's rather annoying! Also when I shutdown it stops after a few seconds and just sits there. I have to goto the File menu and select quit to get it to finish quitting. Win95 is hanging in the shutdown sequence. It doesn't seem to be hurting Win95 as I never get the "Win95 was shutdown improperly last time" message on my next boot, but again, this is annoying. Hope this helps, Tom

10/30/1999 32bit drivers for DOS cards?: Paul found some info that a company is working on 32bit drivers for Apples DOS cards? I hope this is true as many people got stuck with old DOS cards that can only run 16bit drivers which means Windows pretty much left them in the dust. Thanks Paul.