OpenStep on VirtualPC 7

[jeffburg]

Hey folks, I feel like I am abusing this channel at this point, but I thought I would throw out a question for peeps that are experienced with OpenStep/NextStep running in VM's.

I am trying to use Virtual PC 7 on my iMac G4 to install OpenStep. I am running into the traditional issue of IDE Controller issues... Whether I load the basic Primary/Secondary controller drivers or the more advanced PIIX IDE drivers, the system sees the drives and can read the label from the CD Drive, but fails to boot with error ATAPI Command Error.

I am consulting these two guides, but both say these drivers should work:

https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/computing/nextstep-openstep/FAQ-OpenStepOnEmulators.pdf
https://kjt.stir.ac.uk/software/nextstep/openstep-win.html

I have attached screenshots. Including shots of windows XP device manager showing all the hardware it sees.

Thanks so much as always for your help!

[Rhetorica]

I have never gotten NS3.3 to work with an IDE driver; the simple solution for me was to just use SCSI for that VM. There's no practical difference between the two bus types as far as I can tell. Is any sort of SCSI an option under VirtualPC?

[Protocol 7]

I remember for Rhapsody it was necessary to have the CD as primary slave (there's a checkbox somewhere in VPC related to this) and then to use the dual-channel EIDE driver. Maybe it's the same for OS?

[jeffburg]

Yeah, dang. This all sounds likely, but as far as I can tell VPC for Mac has no options for this stuff. I will post a screenshot of the machine settings tomorrow. But it has no options for the CD at all and it has 3 hard drive options fixed in place with no settings except to choose a disk image for them :-/

[Protocol 7]

It had at one point as I was using VPC on Mac to run Rhapsody. But that was VPC 4 or maybe 5. I can't find any images online that show this option. I just remember it was a checkbox probably in the IDE controller setup.

I did find this guide for installing OS4.2 in VPC6. Might work for you.

[jeffburg]

@Protocol 7 thanks so much for the article! Worst case scenario is I have 10.2.8 installed on this iMac. So I can install VPC 6 and get it all set up. Once it boots I am pretty certain it will work in VP7 in 10.5.8. Unfortunately, I ran out of time this weekend... but I will definitely try next weekend!

[jeffburg]

Here is the settings window. You can see it's quite minimal. I am not shocked because version 7 is the first release after Microsoft acquired Connectix. I imagine they tried to simplify things and streamline for the main use case, which was running Windows XP. I also tried running with 32MB and 24MB of ram as suggested in the article but it made no difference.

So I will try VPC6 sometime soon and see if it improves things. I have a feeling that if I can get it installed with VP6, then it will boot from the hard drive fine (after all the patches are installed) in VPC 7.

[Protocol 7]

If the checkbox is anywhere it would be in the Drive 2 settings as that's where it would matter. But I guess they're all the same? 

It might not be needed for OS42 as there's no mention of this in the guide I found for VPC6. I just remember it being required for Rhapsody in conjunction with the dual-channel IDE controller.

[jeffburg]

Yeah, all the drive settings panels look the same :-/

[ptek]

For NS3.3 installation you have to load a SCSI driver for the cdrom first before loading the EIDE driver twice this is because there was a mistake with the /usr/Devices/System.config/Instance0.table file as it requires a SCSI driver to be loaded first.
  I would recommend the SCSI driver over EIDE for speed purposes. Is there a reason for the EIDE driver as it seems the ATAPI driver shits the bed as it is on hc1.
 The ATAPI driver is old and I think is ATAPI V2 compliant it is in one of the NeXT answers. I'm using my phone so my answer is not that great

[ptek]

Try booting into single user mode at the boot screen.

Code Select Expand

-s