[9fans] Running Plan9 under Virtual PC

["Vincent van Gelderen" <v-i-n-z@zonnet.nl>]

Hello 9fans,

This may help people who are trying to
run Plan9, but find their hardware is
not supported.

Connectix has a product called Virtual PC,
which may be of help here. It is something
very much like VMWare. I've heard about
people trying to run plan9 under VMWare,
but not (fully?) succeeding. Probably
because of VGA troubles.

So trying to install plan9 under VPC seemed
a natural move, one which I've tried today.
It basically works, although I did not run any
real checks (other than run acme).


Advantages:

More people can run plan9 now, or at
least try it once.

You could run more than one installation
at a time on the same PC.


Disadvantages:

Everything is much slower, the install
on my PII-450 took over four hours.

Virtual PC costs $199, and the trial
period seems to have ended.



Conclusion:

It certainly does no harm to try, and I
can think of several meaningful applications
(laptop fileserver, painless install at work), 
but I personally will never remove my real Plan9 
setup in lieu of this emulated version.



References:

Connectix lives at http://www.connectix.com

I do a bit of explaining at my own site http://www.home.zonnet.nl/v-i-n-z/
which to some may be too terse, and for others more verbose.


Tips for the savvy:
  
Include 0xC00B5="VERSION 100" in TRIO64 section of /lib/vgadb
Delete partdisk's suggestions and do: a p1 63 2056320 (1GB should be ample)


Have fun!
Vincent