Windows Virtual PC - Emulated Environment

Emulated Environment

Virtual PC emulates the following environments:

  • Intel Pentium II (32-bit) processor (but virtualizes the host processor on Windows versions) with an Intel 440BX chipset.
  • Standard SVGA VESA graphics card (S3 Trio 32 PCI with 4 MB video RAM, adjustable in later versions up to 16 MB by manually editing a virtual machine's settings file).
  • System BIOS from American Megatrends (AMI).
  • Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA PnP. (When Windows Vista is installed as both the host (main) and guest (virtual) operating systems, settings are synchronized with the host and audio configuration is not required.)
  • DEC 21041 (DEC 21140 in newer versions) Ethernet network card.
  • Programs using undocumented features of hardware, exotic timings, or unsupported opcodes may not work.

Implementation:

  • The Macintosh version of Virtual PC uses dynamic recompilation to translate the x86 code used by PCs into equivalent PowerPC code for Macs.
  • The Windows version of Virtual PC also uses dynamic recompilation, but only to translate x86 kernel mode and real mode code into x86 user mode code; original user mode and virtual 8086 mode code run natively.
  • Guest call traps are used, especially for guest extensions, to accelerate emulation or offer additional features, such as integration with the host environment.
  • Virtual PC and Virtual Server encapsulate virtual hard disks in the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file format, for which Microsoft has made all documentation available under the Open Specification Promise.

Earlier versions of Virtual PC supported the following features: (now removed in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004, 2007, and Windows Virtual PC):

  • Older versions of Virtual PC (v5.0 or earlier) may have the hard disk formatted after creating the Virtual Hard Disk file. Newer versions must partition and format the Virtual Hard Disk file manually.
  • A Virtual Switch available in Virtual PC version 4.1 or earlier allows adding multiple network adapters.
  • Older operating systems are supported with Virtual Machine additions.
  • Older versions of Virtual PC for Macintosh can run on Mac OS 9.2.2 or earlier. Support of Apple System 7.5 was dropped in version 3.

Read more about this topic:  Windows Virtual PC

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