A look into SoftWindows(95) cross-platform emulation on SGI Workstations

Running Windows in a virtual machine on a 90's SGI workstation?
Yes, that's possible, and it marked the latest advancement in emulation at the time.

Even in the 80s it was already possible to co-host another CPU platform inside your computer by help of CPU co-processor boards.
This way, it was possible to run DOS on a Macintosh, or CP/M-80 on the PC.
In the 90s, CPU performance has evolved to that point that pure software-only emulation became possible, no longer requiring a co-processord board.
It was, by all means, slow, and in now comparable to hardware-assisted emulation or present-day virtualization.
So let's have a look into SoftWindows(95) on Silicon Graphics workstations.

00:00 Intro
02:48 Inside co-processor assisted emulation
04:51 The SGI Indy under pressure
10:18 SoftWindows 2.0 on the SGI Indy
14:03 SoftWIndows 95 on the SGI Octane 2
16:27 About (unresolved) License Troubles
18:06 Conclusion
19:24 Credits

Historic reference on Windows95 and the "No longer needs DOS" claim:
https://web.archive.org/web/201203150...
https://msfn.org/board/topic/109018-w...
https://techmonitor.ai/technology/for...
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/vie...
https://web.archive.org/web/201407240...

SoftWindows & SoftPC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftPC

Licenses for SoftWindows(95):
https://phaq.phunsites.net/2009/10/20...

SoftWindows 2.0 for UNIX:
https://archive.org/details/softwin2-...

SoftWindows95 for SGI IRIX:
https://archive.org/details/sgi_SoftW...

Hardware-assistet Emulation, co-processor boards:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunPCi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_So...
https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1312
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac286

MAME SGI Emulation Tutorial:
https://sites.google.com/site/console...

SGI IRIX downloads:
http://jrra.zone/sgi/#pg-7

Visit also THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR website at https://phintage.phunsites.net for insights into my retro computer collection.

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https://www.fiverr.com/abdallahghannam