| When I was younger and worked on mainframes I | | | | installed programs, anything you can thing of.Want to |
| was always working with pretty mundane stuff; | | | | try and trash your little virtual machine? By all means |
| batch processing for the most part with what little | | | | do so with no worries, you are isolated from the |
| online work being done with smaller computers | | | | host |
| (Buker-Ramo if you must know) with the mainframes | | | | operating system and won't bother it. In fact you're |
| running DOS/VSE. It was hardly the big league and I | | | | so isolated |
| lusted after the really exotic stuff like MVS/TSO and | | | | your virtual machine will need to have all patches, |
| the top of the heap; VM or Virtual Machine. VM was | | | | anti-virus |
| a "hypervisor". That is it wasn't really an operating | | | | software, etc. installed just like it was a new |
| system but an environment whereby multiple | | | | standalone machine.Other than the obvious benefits |
| operating systems could run on a single machine, | | | | to developers there's also the legacy aspect of all |
| each with protected access to the full instruction set | | | | that great (okay, maybe not so great) DOS |
| and, most importantly, protected from each other. | | | | software that's still out there. If you've ever wanted |
| You could crash and burn your private virtual machine | | | | to |
| and everything else kept on running without a hitch. I | | | | experiment or, if you're a refuge from the old days, |
| can't recall the number of batch jobs I killed because | | | | experience some of the old stuff again without |
| a problem with a program in one partition in DOS | | | | trashing your current system Virtual PC is the way to |
| VSE caused the whole machine to crash.I say "was a | | | | do it.Performance on a perky AMD 4200+ system |
| hypervisor". Firstly it was an OS in it's own right and | | | | was brisk. Oh, Windows Server 2003 wasn't as fast |
| thus is more than a hypervisor and secondly it's | | | | as it would have been had it been the only thing |
| still around to the point that it'll run Linux as a client | | | | running but it was certainly acceptable. Everything |
| operating system. But my experience was from afar, | | | | else was certainly faster than any hardware I'd used |
| I left the mainframe world and never got to work | | | | it on before, certainly far, far faster than say an |
| with it full time.But now I have my own little virtual | | | | 80286 so it seemed |
| world. A while back Microsoft bought Connectix and | | | | remarkable quick. I did have one session in Win 2003 |
| their virtual machine technology. Oh, I'd tried it along | | | | where I dropped a few characters from the |
| with VMWare a while back and frankly it didn't do | | | | keyboard and from time to time I'd have to tell DOS |
| much for me either because my hardware wasn't up | | | | that there was indeed a floppy in the drive two |
| to it, the software wasn't robust or a combination of | | | | times (a pain when installing the 8 disk Windows for |
| both but recently I picked up the latest version of | | | | Workgroups update to Win 3.1) but nothing |
| Virtual PC from Microsoft and wow, how the worm | | | | terminal.There are troublesome questions; will the |
| has turned, Virtual PC 2004 has come into it's | | | | police break down your door if you set up a virtual |
| own.What does it do? Firstly it installs in Windows XP | | | | copy of XP Pro using the same copy of XP Pro |
| Pro or Win 2k Pro just like any other program. Once | | | | that's hosting Virtual PC? Read your EULA but |
| set up you're ready to create as many virtual | | | | Microsoft has announced that they will allow |
| machines as you can find.A wizard is available to walk | | | | "virtulizing" Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise and |
| you through the set up but it's hardly needed. You | | | | the Datacenter edition of "Longhorn". Sadly they |
| set up the amount of RAM and hard drive space you | | | | haven't made any changes to the desktop software |
| want to allocate to the "guest" operating system and | | | | license.But there's still plenty of stuff to plink away at |
| start preparing the virtual machine like you would a | | | | and you can try Virtual PC for 45 days for free. List |
| regular computer. This might mean partitioning the | | | | price from Mr. Softie is $129. I've seen it discounted |
| hard drive, formatting it | | | | at several places and, as |
| and then installing the operating system.What | | | | always, be sure to check around for the best price. |
| operating system? Doesn't seem to matter. It took | | | | Meanwhile if you want to check it out you can |
| more time to track down old floppies than it did for | | | | download the trial version off the Microsoft info page |
| me to install Windows 2003 server, FreeDOS, BSD | | | | here.And my biggest problem? Finding a 5.25" diskette |
| and DOS 7.0.Fire up Virtual PC and a console comes | | | | drive for all that old software.Don Watkins, |
| up that allows you to select an existing guest | | | | Copyright, 2006. May be reprinted in compliance with |
| operating system or install a new one.So what's the | | | | terms.About Don Watkins - Don has been in involved |
| benefit? Well it's pretty cool to be able to | | | | in computers since the 60's starting PCNet on |
| isolate various operating systems so you can do just | | | | CompuServe in 1983. In 1994, Don was awarded the |
| about anything yet not have your main machine | | | | John Dvorak Lifetime Achievement Award. He was |
| crash and burn. You can set up a virtual machine just | | | | awarded the SIA Lifetime Achievement Award in |
| like it's a real computer with it's own IP address, | | | | 2003. |