[MV] VPC as your OS on a Mac

Sun Jan 11 20:50:24 PST 2004

Hi all,

Regarding VPC, you can NEVER run it without the OS behind it. VPC 
emulates Windows on a Mac - by definition that means the emulator is 
talking to the OS, which then communicates to the hardware. The 
instructions below describe how to run VPC without running the Finder, 
which did make it faster on Mac OS 9 machines, but has no effect in OS 
X (quitting the Finder just quits another UNIX process).

The real issue behind all this is the huge amount of processing power 
speech recognition needs. Another issue is the translation of sound. 
Operating Systems don't like sharing sound. Getting the sound from the 
Microphone through the Mac hardware, into the Mac OS operating system, 
then into VPC, where it is (hopefully) handed off in such a way that 
the Windows OS can understand it and maintain its quality, then pass 
that along to a speech engine such as Naturally Speaking, which then 
needs whatever processing power is left (which is by this point almost 
nothing) is just too much to ask. (Sorry for the run-on sentence.)

If you need the best speech recognition on *any* platform, I don't 
think many would argue that the 800 lb. gorilla is Naturally Speaking 
from Dragon Systems, which is now owned by Scansoft.

If you want to stay on the Mac (and who wouldn't) the only choice today 
is iListen from MacSpeech. I gotta tell you - 1.6 is excellent!

Best Regards,

Chuck Rogers

On Jan 11, 2004, at 10:42 PM, Snow White wrote:

> No I have not tried and everything below is true you could try running 
> VPC as your OS without OSX or 9 behind it.  I have some notes on this 
> from OS9.  I will include these at the bottom after all the quotes.
>
> jj
>
> On Sunday, January 11, 2004, at 05:49 PM, tscheresky at micron.com wrote:
>
>> VPC
>> Reply-To: "MacVoice, Speech Recognition List" 
>> <MacVoice at lists.themacintoshguy.com>
>>
>> I've tried it.  It doesn't work.  Voice-recognition needs a lot of 
>> processing power that the current emulation software and hardware 
>> cannot provide.  Thanks...
>>
>> Todd
>>
>>> Subject: [MV] Re: VPC
>>>
>>> Although I haven't tried it personally, my understanding that voice
>>> recognition is far too processor intensive to work with an emulator.
>>> Several people have posted to this list that it simply won't work.
>>>
>>> Robert
>>>
>>> On 01/11/2004 2:39 PM, "Ellen Scheiner, M.D." 
>>> <scheiner at pipeline.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Has anyone tried Dragon NS on a Mac using VPC? Is version 6 fast 
>>>> enough?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Ellen Scheiner
>
>
>
> VPC as an OS on a MAC in OS9
>
> Message-Id: <p05100302b7f58b0dbbaa@[129.177.46.227]>
> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 10:02:59 +0200
> From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Torbj=F8rn?= Bruvold <tony at levin.as>
> Subject: [SM] S900 & Virtual PC
>
>
> Yeah I've running VPC (v3.0) on both my Umax s900/G3 360 and Apple 
> G4/400
> The speed is much better on the G4, more than twice as fast.
>   ( I wonder why?? cause the differences isnt so much normally)
> Tried a bit og gaming, conclusion: Starcraft is running smoother on
> my friends Pentium2 266then the umax g3
>
> There is no 3d card support either.
> The video is an emulated S3 Trio card and you are using you ram as
> vram (from 1-4 megs)
>
> EXCEPTv3.0 version who support voodoo cards. I havent tried it, but
> it's stated in the manual.
> The support is dropped in version 4, because of incompablilities i 
> think.
> (Mine is equipped with a rage 128 16 mb)
>
> If you need to REALLY run Windows at it's fastest on your Mac, do
> this with VPC:
> On another partition (or HD) 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=81 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 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 Win,
> 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!
>
> Anyway remember to give vpc a lot of memory and set its video memory
> size to max (4megs)
> WIndows 95 runs also speedier then win 98  (havent tried  2000)
>
>   Torbj=F8rn
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message-ID: <3BD02541.F07B875A at earthlink.net>
> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 09:06:37 -0400
> From: Alan Kim <alankim at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [SM] S900 & Virtual PC
>
>
> First of all, how do you type that second o with the slash ?
> And thanks for posting your very very useful information.
>
> Take care,
>
> Alan
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 09:59:10 EDT
> From: Greekdish at aol.com
> Subject: Re: [SM] virtual pc and umax
> Message-ID: <51.12d842ed.29018bae at aol.com>
>
> Dan
>
> What setup are you running 10.1 on your Umax??? What video card do you
> have?? I know you can get OSx to run on Umax's, but for me, its not
> worth it as I dont have an ATI video card, I have a Voodoo 5 5500, and
> my system runs great with it. I really dont want to have to shell out
> more money for a video card just to run OSX on my Umax, when it would 
> be
> more beneficial to splurge on a dual G4 Mac and get som serious
> performance!! =)
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> ----------
> <http://www.themacintoshguy.com/lists/MacVoiceFAQ.html>.
> Send a message to <MacVoice-DIGEST at themacintoshguy.com> to switch to 
> the digest version.
>
> iMic    | Connect virtually any microphone or sound input device via 
> USB
> Dr. Bott | Now $35.00      <http://www.drbott.com/prod/iMic.html>
>
> MacResQ Specials: LaCie SCSI CDR From $99! PowerBook 3400/200 Only 
> $879! Norton AntiVirus 6 Only $19! We Stock PARTS! 
> <http://www.macresq.com>
>
> iListen by  | Dictate or Transcribe your next email (or anything else).
> MacSpeech  | Buy iListen 1.5 for $99. Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X!
> at Dr. Bott |      <http://www.drbott.com/prod/macspeech.html>
> at Dr. Bott |      <http://www.drbott.com/prod/macspeech.html>
>