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interview with XP on Mac winner

appletalk.com.au — interview with Jesus Lopez (Otherwise known as blanka) who was part of the 2 man team that successfully got Windows XP to install and run on an Intel Mac. from ATAU

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  • energyblue, on 10/12/2007, -32/+28Well Done Jesus!
    • Darrelc, on 10/12/2007, -4/+52Site is running slow already, Heres the full text.



      Windows on Macs - Part 3
      By: iSlayer
      Mar 20 2006

      Part 3 of our series on running Windows on Macs is a special one.
      We have been lucky enough to have had a chance to talk to Jesus Lopez (Otherwise known as blanka) who was part of the 2 man team that successfully got Windows XP to install and run on an Intel Mac.

      AppleTalk: What was your motivation behind attempting the project ?
      Jesus: There were several reasons the project attracted my interest. In no particular order:

      * This project represented something that a lot of people could benefit from.
      * The Mac Mini seems like the perfect computer for a personal project I've had in mind for the past few months: Building a car computer (craputer) with GPS, Internet, Media library, etc. Unfortunately, most carputer software is for Windows.
      * The consensus on running XP on a Mac was that it was impossible. Proving something thought impossible is actually possible is quite enticing. I like solving hard problems.
      * It had been a while since I had done any significant low-level code programming. It's always good to remember the good ol' times winkwink0om.gif
      * The prize money helped justify the time I poured over this project.



      AppleTalk: How does the Boot Loader/CSM work ?
      Jesus: In brief, this is what it does:

      * Reconfigure the i945 and ICH7 chipsets to map memory at the usual BIOS memory areas.
      * Program those areas with a custom written "BIOS". This BIOS is coded in 16 bit real mode assembly. It implements all interrupts (legacy API calls) by switching into 32 bit protected mode and calling the CSM code.
      * The CSM code implements a subset of the legacy interrupts by invoking the appropriate EFI API. All the other unimplemented interrupts are handled by breaking into a built-in debugger.
      * Implement legacy boot protocols: El Torito, MBR and Boot sector specifications are followed to figure out what code to execute.
      * Once the target code is found and loaded into memory, the bootloader switches into 16bit real mode and relinquishes control to it.

      That's the gist of it. Additionally, some Windows code had to be patched in order for it to not reject the slight hardware differences between the Apple hardware and the standard legacy AT architecture still prevalent in all modern PCs.

      * Lack of 8042 keyboard controller.
      * Apparent lack of VGA text modes (for now, it hasn't been possible to switch the video hardware into a character-based text mode, although it is still believed to be possible).

      AppleTalk: What were the biggest challenges when developing it ?
      Jesus: Figuring out at each step why Windows would not perform as expected. Either freezing, or displaying a black screen or simply rebooting. Very, very hard to debug.

      AppleTalk: How long did development take before the first release ?
      Jesus: I heard about the contest from narf on January 25, 2006. I convinced him to buy an iMac 17" that same day. He bought it an hour afterward, and Amazon delivered it the next day. The rest is history.

      AppleTalk: Currently there are alot of issues with drivers. Do you expect these to all be sorted out eventually ?
      Jesus: I'll have to say I am quite impressed with the outpouring of effort this project has seen since the release to the community. There is a wiki at wiki.onmac.net with lots of information. People are trying new drivers every day, and I've also heard from people willing to help figuring out any of the remaining drivers issues. I believe it is a matter of time before we are running fully accelerated 3d video on Apple hardware.

      AppleTalk: We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us
      Jesus: I want to thank your audience for the interest in this project. The bottomline is that that was what made this project possible.
    • Chongo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14So let me ask the question for us Non-techies..... I realize this is pretty hardcore.....but is it hardcore to the hardcore? or is it something that is easy to do but just takes alot of work?

      please, stay back! no don't hit the thumbs down! noooo!
    • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5To the guy above me, Chongo, Yeah that is really hard. Intel Macs load on EFI, and XP does not load on EFI, it used BIOS and must be emulated.
    • narphorium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13@Chongo

      Yes, this is "hardcore to the hardcore". Not only is programming in 16 bit assembly considered hardcore compared to the verbosity of todays high level, object-oriented languages but this project was also a nightmare to debug. Debugging a setup like this cannot be done by trying every possible configuration. It requires a lot of intuition about how the hardware works and what the Windows programmers were thinking when they wrote the boot-up routines.

      In the interview, blanka talks about starting up the mac only to have windows show a blank screen or reboot...from there he had to debug what was wrong with his code. That my friend, is hardcore.
    • Chongo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Killer, thanks for the kindly replies. I figured it was a very tough thing to accomplish, but judging by some comments floating around this topic (on other sites mostly), it seemed to me that some people just didn't appreciate it. They made it sound like it was no big deal. To me this seems pretty major in the long term scheme of things.

      thanks again
    • cheesy_1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1More hardcore than getting Linux to run on an iPod, and that's pretty hardcore.
  • phore, on 10/12/2007, -43/+14You da man Jesus!
  • mwallace, on 10/12/2007, -40/+14Jesus is my homeboy
  • akirakurosawa, on 10/12/2007, -38/+9JEEEZZZZZZUUUUUUUUUZ!!
  • bigvics, on 10/12/2007, -36/+12JESUS LOPEZ FOR PRESIDENT
  • willhoy, on 10/12/2007, -36/+14Nobody ***** with the Jesus man...


    * i love that movie
  • mynuts, on 10/12/2007, -30/+12Jesus kicks ass!
  • djork, on 10/12/2007, -36/+16Wow, not a single on-topic comment yet.
  • Corsix, on 10/12/2007, -25/+10"The Mac Mini seems like the perfect computer for a personal project I've had in mind for the past few months: Building a car computer (craputer) with GPS, Internet, Media library, etc. Unfortunately, most carputer software is for Windows."
    Did he mean carputer or craputer?
    • sinembarg0, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2craputer duuh. and computer that runs XP is a craputer on the software side (i own 2 apples, a //e and a color classic. I have at least 20 PCs. I'm not a fanboy.), but hes talking about dirt cheap hardware. and bury this.
  • Ianmacisaac, on 10/12/2007, -24/+8God job Jesus!
  • samfold, on 10/12/2007, -19/+81They said walking on water was impossible...

    They said turning water into water was impossible...

    They said rising from the dead was impossible...

    They said running windows xp in a mac was impossible...

    But one man could do it...

    Jesus
    • foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -46/+10"...

      They said turning water into water was impossible..."

      OMFG!!!1!!11 i can do that! I CAN DO THE IMPOSSIBLE!!1!1oneoneone
    • noeljohnhoward, on 10/12/2007, -13/+10wine?
    • DNABeast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13I guess that answers the question 'WWJD?'

      He'd custom write a bios.
    • Nathanael, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I think that may be the most hilarious comment I have ever read on Digg - ever.
    • rspeed, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1You do NOT f--k with the Jesus!

      (crap, someone already made that stupid joke)
  • breckinloggins, on 10/12/2007, -8/+19I wonder how long this would have taken had there been no money in it. I'm not knocking Jesus (he and his buddy did a bang-up job) but it is an interesting question.
    • foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -18/+4i don't know why you got negged. maybe someone thought, when you said, "jesus," that you meant "Jesus." who the freak knows. too many religious nuts on digg, it seems.

      anyway, i agree. this would've gone A LOT quicker WITHOUT the $$$!
    • manthrax3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Don't think of it as money, think of it as resources. The purpose of an economy is to distribute resources as efficiently as possible. If a lot of people want a resource that only a few people have (the greater mac community and jesus respectively), you will rarely have a one-way transfer of resources.

      Not all resources are monetary (fame, respect, experience, etc), but money is the easiest to exchange since it is a resource in its purest most objective form while the value of fame, etc is very subjective.
    • Darthmalt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1It'd probably take about the same amount of time. I'm sure the prize money helped, but there was also a lot of prestige waiting for whoever did it first. As I understand there was also another group that was only a little ways off of achieving the same thing.
  • JakeMcMahon, on 10/12/2007, -21/+14"OMG HIS NAME IZ JESUSS LOLOL"

    Cut the crap already. He has the same name as some guy that 'sposed to have done some stuff some time.

    He cracked a macintel. Fair play to him.
    • Prometheus, on 10/12/2007, -12/+10Well but isn't it likely that the name Jesus is popular in Hispanic (i assume) cultures because of the biblical Jesus?
    • Jozer99, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Jesus is the spelling and pronunciation of the name "Joshua" in some languages.
    • sinembarg0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Jesus in this case is pronounced like Hey-Zeus. Just like the famous baseball player.
  • penguindude15, on 10/12/2007, -17/+4Well done. But, why is everyone trying to get windows to run on mac computer and not mac on windows computer? Apple had it working on Pentium chips. It was running at 3.6 GHz. Proof:

    http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc05/

    So, they could get both to work on whatever computer they had there. Not to take any anything away from Jesus
    • Ignorant, on 10/12/2007, -12/+10osx86project.org
      Mac is running on Windows p.c.'s as well.
    • foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -11/+6ummm... that's a good question. let me think...

      BECAUSE IT'S ALREADY BEEN DONE! proof:

      http://www.osx86project.org

      not to take anything away from your post... well, actually, yes. yes, i was trying *hard* to take EVERYTHING away from your lame post.
    • sinembarg0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1wow your a genius. im currently using a dual-boot ibm t30. OS X has been on PCs for a long time. like 4 months at least.
  • hammydude, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Jesus p'OWNED apple and microsoft
  • ChubbyPickle, on 10/12/2007, -24/+5Jesus is a *****
  • Jewel707, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12Props to these two guys. Very time consuming task. Cant wait until windows is fully useable as a os on mac with all the drivers included and tip top working condition just as if you had a pc.
  • lollerskates, on 10/12/2007, -13/+15You guys do know it's probably pronounced "Hey-zeus," right?
  • ericpp, on 10/12/2007, -14/+8Our Savior!
  • KublaKhan, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4I already knew his name because he had an interview with Cnet the other day... I guess no one noticed that...

    By the way, samfold, Jesus turned water into wine NOT water into water!
  • maggoty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4There are some dam smart cookies out there... shows you what happens when these people use their powers for good and not evil. :-)
  • wangdang, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3This jesus facilitated the pouring of urine into bordeaux wine bottles, but props to him for accomplishing stuff...hacking and tweaking stuff is what computers are all about, even if it means putting an inferior os on a "deserves better" machine.

    Who's up for putting OS2 on a PS2 once it's out?
  • plamoni, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Kudos to Jesus on this in a major way. He talks about how hard it was to diagnose problems with the Windows boot (due to a complete lack of debug info), but I can't even imagine how frustrating that must have been. Way to stick to it Jesus!!!

    PS- I do believe that should be "carputer", not "craputer", unless he plans to run Windows on it :-).
  • m1th, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/index.html
  • lmfsmoke, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Geez a mexican did that, cool
  • Bortoni, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Viva Mexico!
  • min_t, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Jesus is in all of us, black,white, yellow,brown.
    Suffice to say that Obi1(Jesus) of the rebel alliance triumphs over the dark side of the empire(Microsoft).
  • ericdfields, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2i'm looking for an educated guess from some of the more knowledgeable diggers.

    how long will it take...

    * before a cd/dvd iso floats on to the net that will automagically install osx & xp on my mac?
    * before a cd/dvd iso floats on to the net that will automagically install osx & xp on my pc?
    * before either of these solutions gives you the option of leaving room for another partition/linux?
    * before either of these solutions also gives you the option of installing linux?

    how i love to muse...
  • Hindu_Wardrobe, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5I read this article, saw that his name was Jesus, and thought "Haha, I bet the diggers are gonna crack a lot of jokes about Jesus in the comments."
    That's the only reason I'm in here. To read the Jesus jokes.
    w00t for Jesus!!!
    Jesus is my bitch
  • colgate, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5After reading the article, I have to say I'm amazed at was Jesus has managed to achieve here. Walking on water was nothing compared to this - turning water to wine a walk in the park.

    Only a few months ago, we heard Apple technicians saying this was likely an impossibility. Jesus, without access to the wealth of technical knowledge that Apple have regarding the inner workings of their/Intel's EFI bios have proven them wrong. Let's consider the skill set he needed to get this working:

    1) A detailed knowledge of Apple's EFI bios implementation to code the EFI boot-loader
    2) A fundamental understanding of legacy Bios - to the level where he could essentially write a Bios emulator
    3) The ability to code well in assembler - I though this level of knowledge disappeared after the 64kb demo days!
    4) The ability to troubleshoot Windows XP boot issues, essentially blindfolded, with no access to source code and no meaningful debugging output on screen.

    Possession of any one of those skills would be admirable - to have all four, and bring them together to achieve something that Apple - who designed this system in conjunction with Intel - claimed to be impossible, is astounding. And he's so modest in the interview, he doesn't try to talk up his achievement at all.

    My congratulations to Jesus - Apple would do well to employ you!
  • PrettyBoyFloyd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I think with what he's demonstrated, Jesus (along his buddy Narf) could both write their own mealticket with any number of technology companies this week. Congratulations to them both and all best wishes for a bright future in this business. If I were in a position to hire them, I'd have sent them an offer already.
  • Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm going to refrain from making a Jesus joke, although it's very tempting.
    Great to see that these guys did it and got the money they deserved. Congrats to blanka and narf - great work!
  • derekknight, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This guy obviously paid attention in computer class.

    I, on the other hand, played strip poker on the computer at school. Went home each day and ate Chef Boy-r-De Mini Raviolis while watching Voltron.

    Ah, it was a good life!
  • Livert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm surprised Chuck Norris did not with the contest.
  •  

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