Virtualization old skool - A trip down memory lane with SoftPC for the Mac
Wow I feel like I have been around the block for a few times now.
With all of the industry buzz around virtualization it got me thinking on how long I have been tinkering with the concept.
I remember getting Virtual PC running on my Mac back who knows when using it for a small set of applications. Talk about a long time ago - and a more complex solution then needed at the time.
You see I was a Mac person back then and no way was I going to own a PC. Instead I spent countless hours trying to load windows 95 on a PPC Mac with 16MB Ram and frustrated that it would take 5 min to boot up. Even at best I still had issues with drivers and remember how fun it was when the OS would crash and I had the pleasure of rebooting w95.
Wikipedia states that the first VPC for the Mac came out in 1997 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_PC.
However, I would like to point out that it was before this that I was tinkering. When I reference “old skool” we are talking SoftPC Days. That’s right, back to 1988. Now it may not have been called virtualization at the time and some could argue that it was not true virtualization but I would have to point out the underlining concept is still the same. I used it to emulate a different OS on top of a host OS.
To give you an idea take a look at the hardware requirements:
SoftPC requires highpowered hardware to operate: at a minimum, either a Mac II or an SE equipped with a 68020 accelerator card (we tested it on a Mac II), a hard disk with at least 3 Mbytes of free space…
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/premium/0286/0286-9200407.html
Who’s old skool now?
