![]() ![]() Over the years as accessible computing has made vast inroads into our every day lives, and inexorably the cogitative abilities of the humble home or office PC have increased. ![]() Using a method known as virtualisation back in the heady days of large symmetric mainframe systems, it was common for resources to be better optimised by taking the multiprocessor system and through virtualisation dedicating different installations of the operating systems to run against one of the available processors. The process of running an operating system literally on top of another one is not a new one. So, is this an elaborate trick designed to fool those users of less experience? Not quite, though users of less experienced disposition may wish to turn away now and be happy in their naivety. An operating system designed for a specific CPU architecture say the x86 architecture on your desktop PC, simply could not contemplate running under another processor type (for instance the XScale on your Handheld PC). Just as with how a H/PC user will appreciate that a MIPS application cannot run on a StrongARM backed device, and a Windows CE application cannot run on your Windows or Linux desktop PC. The art of running any operating system is one that requires a fundamental understanding of the makeup of the hardware it will run on. Windows 98 was actually running on the Axim in front of Windows Mobile. The PPC wasn't using a network connection there was nothing out of the ordinary in the hardware makeup of the PPC itself - just a run of the mill Windows Mobile 2003 device. Here though this wasn't an experiment in remote connectivity, this was a far more highbrow exercise. Anyone with a network connection and a VNC client can achieve that in a relatively short space of time. Nothing spectacular in that one would think. Of particular note in this category are the exploits of a number of overly excited Axim (Dell PPC) users who have been swapping images of the Windows 98 desktop in their QVGA and VGA displays since the middle of last year. When you have a critical mass of active developers confined to a small, 240x340 space inevitably someone will push the boat out from harbour and sail it right over a waterfall surfacing in the realm of what most people would call abject fantasy. The Pocket PC (PPC) I will admit - through circumstance and not for any prevailing feature of its own - does have one advantage. ![]() BOCHS 2.1.1 - x86 Emulation makes it to the H/PC ![]()
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