MAC OS on Thinkpads

[monty cantsin]

Yes, that is infact Mac OS you see on my screen. Your eyes do not decive you. (I'm using Basilisk II to run Mac OS 7.55 under Windows)

Btw, how stable is Basilisk II? I tried to use it many years ago and it constantly crashed. The greatest 68k-Mac-Emulator (very fast and extremely stable -- never crashed on me) that I have ever seen is the former Microcode Solutions' FUSION PC (which was bought by Emulators Inc. and shortly thereafter released as freeware):

ftp://www.emulators.com/fusion/

http://www.mobilenews.ne.jp/news/1999/02/fusion.jpg

http://www2.wbs.ne.jp/~maehara/mac/fusion.htm

(Runs very well on an old Pentium I machine of mine, but unfortunately I haven't been able to get it running on more modern hardware yet. )

[AlphaKilo470]

Basilisk II is pretty stable. I'm running system 7.55 and using the ROM from a Macintosh Quadra 650. I've run Basilisk II on many platforms, never had any trouble on it yet, I've had it run fine on system setups as low as my now long gone ThinkPad 760ED w/ 16mb RAM, 1gb HD, 2mb graphics card and Win98 to systems as new as my Athlon XP 1800+ desktop with Windows XP, 40gb hard drive, 1.6gb RAM and Radeon 9000 128mb graphics card. Given, it was much slower on the old ThinkPad 760ED than on my Athlon desktop, but I've never had trouble with it. You just need to make sure the software is setup correctly. Also, for running Basilisk II, I recomend at least a Pentium 133, 32mb RAM and Windows 98 (I haven't tested it on 95.) On 486's and Pentiums below 100mhz, I'd stick to Fusion. I'm actually thinking about getting one of my old 486 DOS boxes and putting Fusion on it and making the computer boot from DOS into that.

[monty cantsin]

I'm actually thinking about getting one of my old 486 DOS boxes and putting Fusion on it and making the computer boot from DOS into that.

In fact I had FUSION PC running on the fastest 486 CPU ever, an AMD X5...

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/Pro ... 68,00.html
http://www.microprocessor.sscc.ru/chipl ... 33.12.html
http://www.idhw.com/textual/guide/noin_ ... _5x86.html

...clocked at 160Mhz internally with 40Mhz external bus speed(*). Usually this CPU is a bit faster than a Pentium 90 (only the internal math co-pro is significantly slower) and even runs Windows 2000 quite fine, so I am under the impression that FUSION has some serious Pentium optimizations. On this 486 system FUSION was not very responsive and therefore no real joy to use, while on a Pentium 133, it felt like a real Mac. But I suspect in part this experience is also related to the operating system I'm running on FUSION, as it's not your System 7.5.5, but rather a more recent MacOS 8.1 (i.e., the last one supporting 68k hardware). I guess an older MacOS will run better on 486 hardware.

(*) Actually this 486-like AMD Am5x86-P90-160 was never officially released, as it had been dropped in favor of AMD's Pentium-compatible K5 line.

[AlphaKilo470]

What kind of 486 did you run Fusion on? The slowest I've ever tried was a DX4 100. And where'd you find that 160mhz chip? until now, I thougt I've seen it all.

[monty cantsin]

What kind of 486 did you run Fusion on?

An AMD-X5-133ADW, clocked at 160=4x40MHz.

The slowest I've ever tried was a DX4 100. And where'd you find that 160mhz chip? until now, I thougt I've seen it all.

The AMD X5 (also known as Am5x86 and later Am486-DX5) was quite popular in the last days of the 486, just like the 25MHz Harris CS80C286-25 was at end of the 286 era...

http://www.redhill.net.au/c-1.html#286-25

Although AMD just rated it for operation at 133MHz, this CPU had a great potential and was an overclocker's dream. In the beginning, AMD not only planned on putting out an official 160MHz version, but also had a 200MHz chip in the pipeline. Then AMD realised that the X5 was a great rival to their new Pentium clone K5 (also termed 5k86) -- the 5x86-P75 (at 133MHz) already had almost the same integer performance like the 5k86-P75 (at 75MHz) and even a slightly better FPU speed -- so they decided to pull the faster X5 486-class chips in order to get a foothold in the growing Pentium-class market.

Some benchmark results for comparison with Intel Pentium CPUs:

Code: Select all

CPU                     Chipset          Dhrystone  =MIPS  Whetstone  =MFLOPS

486 DX2-66              UMC8886BF/8881F      24180     65       9344       16
Pentium 75              Triton               50220    135      25112       43
5X86-160 write through  UMC8886BF/8881F      59148    159      25696       44
Pentium 90              Triton               61380    165      30368       52
Pentium 100             Triton               68076    183      33872       58
5X86-160 write back     UMC8886BF/8881F      79236    213      27448       47
Pentium 120             Triton               81840    220      40296       69

Anyway, finally there were three different CPGA models of the X5 CPU available, ending with W, Y and Z. The W could stand temperatures of up to 55 deg. C, the Y would handle 75 deg. C and the Z 85 deg. C. Originally the last two were considered to be marketed as CPUs suited for a higher clock speed, but then, due to the reasons I pointed out above, they also ended up as 133MHz chips, only with the difference that just a heatsink without fan (Y) or no heatsink at all (Z) were required for them.

Overclocking these chips is really no problem, and many boards will even show different CPU ID strings on boot-up when these chips are operated at different clock speeds. Depending on the BIOS, one and the same X5 may show up as an Am5x86-P75-133 when running at 4x33 MHz external clock speed, Am5x86-P75+-150 at 3x50MHz, or Am5x86-P90-160 at 4x40MHz. Actually I've got such an ADW-model here with heatsink and fan that's been running at 160MHz for about nine years now, without any problems yet. Reportedly some people have also succeeded in getting the Z-model to operate at 180=3x60MHz or even 200=4x50MHz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_5x86

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content ... /19751.pdf

http://www.redhill.net.au/c-3.html#586-133

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/80486/MANUF-AMD.html

http://www.cpu-collection.de/?tn=0&l0=c ... 5X5-133ADZ