SCOUG OS/2 For You - April 1998

For many users and companies, the Macintosh is the platform of choice, as it offers software and capabilities in areas such as graphic design that are difficult to match elsewhere.

For those that find that platform not meeting their other needs, there's a software solution that allows Mac users to use Intel x86 operating systems such as OS/2. Virtual PC by Connectix Corp., was demonstrated at a recent SCOUG meeting. This article outlines some of my experiences installing and using version 1.0 of Virtual PC with OS/2. This should not be considered a review as my experience with it was not detailed enough to do the product justice.

Installation

Virtual PC installs virtually automatically, and depending on the version, installs PC-DOS or Windows. To install OS/2, you're on your own - there is no mention of OS/2 in the manual. Not to worry, you won't need any. Well, not much, anyway.

Not being familiar with a Mac, I was wondering how to install a foreign OS, and decided that perhaps I ought to reboot the computer. But a Ctrl-Alt-Del merely reboots the Virtual PC window! You can see a normal PC boot sequence occur in a little window, see the OS/2 install begin, and trust me, you won't be able to keep from laughing out loud.

In one of the most flawless OS/2 installs I've seen, OS/2 "saw" without error the hardware that Virtual PC emulates, including a Soundblaster sound card, S3 video chip, and IDE drive and CD-ROM. The install completed without incident. It even allowed me to "partition" the Virtual PC "disk". The video was corrupted in SVGA, but worked well in VGA mode.

Operation

I was anxious to see if my OS/2 desktop worked. It did - more laughter. I tried some of the installed applets, and found they also worked. However, while Virtual PC allows access of folders on the "Mac side" in something called "folder sharing," this only works with the pre-installed operating system. Too bad.

Another problem I ran into was that when I tried to install some of my favorite applications in Virtual PC, the floppy drive didn't seem to work. I played around, thinking it was my error. Then I decided to call tech support, as this product was really a strange animal. Even though Connectix markets this product as supporting OS/2, a call to tech support is guaranteed to be frustrating, as they'll tell you that they don't support OS/2! Sheesh! After a few minutes, I was told that nobody there knew of any issues with OS/2. I was on my own. Shades of Windows vendors!

I decided to give Connectix's very helpful User Group liaison a call, and he acknowledged my tech support problem, but insisted that they did support OS/2. In fact, there were fixes for it, but they didn't have them on their web site - it was up to tech support to give out. What's wrong with this picture?

The problem with the floppy drive was a known one, and not expected to be fixed in version 2.0.

So on to an install of apps from CD. I was disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to install my copy of Relish on Virtual PC, but I came across an older trial version on CD. That installed flawlessly. And at the demo, you all saw the experiment where we were able to set an alarm in Relish, minimize the OS/2 session, and hear the alarm properly while on the Mac side. Bravo! Very impressive!

I also installed Entrepreneur, a game from Stardock, and it seemed to run fine. In fact, almost everything I tried seemed run fine, albeit slower. But while apps run slower on Virtual PC, the emulation is still quite good, and the performance hit is not as great as you might expect. Be aware, though, that Virtual PC emulates a lower end Soundblaster Pro sound card, which doesn't work with OS/2's VoiceType.

Final Thoughts

Virtual PC is an amazing product. For Mac users, it offers a way to get much of the best of both worlds. And, since Mac users frequently find the OS/2 interface more intuitive and closer to the Mac than Windows, companies can offer OS/2 solutions without much additional training costs and with a smaller learning curve. For OS/2 users, it provides additional options. And if you can live with the shortcomings, which hopefully will be addressed in the future, it's performance and usability is quite good.

And for those staying on an Intel x86 machine, but needing to run Mac apps, apparently there's a software solution that allows OS/2 users to run Mac applications....but that's another article! For more information on Virtual PC visit: http://www.connectix.com/html/connectix_virtualpc.html.

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