Mac & Emulators (VBox + Sonomoa + EMU71)

[PeterP]

Hi, I recently upgraded my iMac Pro (18 core Intel Xeon W, 32 gb) to Sonoma 14.2.1 and re-installed VBox.

I then created a Windows10 Virtual System, on which I installed Christophs amazing EMU71b. However, it is entirely unusable. It is impossible to press the keys with the mouse as the lag and capture has maybe a 5% hit rate, and using the keyboard is even worse, maybe a 1% success rate.

I've allocated 4gb of memory and 2 processors, nested paging, Hyper-V Paravirtualization.

I tried it with and without shared folder, but the result is always the same.

I am wondering if anyone here on a mac system has experienced something similar now or in the past and if they can share how they were able to get to a high performant EMU71 environment on Mac.

Thank you!

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(02-08-2024 10:58 AM)PeterP Wrote:  I am wondering if anyone here on a mac system has experienced something similar now...

Yes, I can confirm that unfortunately EMU71b in it's current version is totally unuseable in the manner you describe on my Macintosh as well. My system however is much older and less performant than yours (MacBook Pro 2011, Intel Core I7, Windows 8.1 in Virtiual Box) but for comparison I tried the native calculator of MS Windows which works just fine.

Regards
Max

[Sylvain Cote]

(02-08-2024 10:58 AM)PeterP Wrote:  I am wondering if anyone here on a mac system has experienced something similar now or in the past and if they can share how they were able to get to a high performant EMU71 environment on Mac.

I am using the following without any issue.

• MacBook Pro 15 2019 (Intel Core i9/8 cores/2.4GHz/32GB DDR4 2.4GHz/Radeon Pro Vega 20 4GB/2TB SSD)
• macOS Sonoma (v14.3)
• Parallels Desktop 19 Pro for Mac (v19.2.1)
• Windows 7 Pro 32-bit (v6.1 SP1)
• Emu71B (v1.17)
  

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello,

just tried it on my wife's M1 MacBook (macOS 12.1) using Windows 7 running under UTM. Works perfectly fine.

Regards
Max

[KeithB]

(02-08-2024 01:39 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Hello,

just tried it on my wife's M1 MacBook (macOS 12.1) using Windows 7 running under UTM. Works perfectly fine.

Regards
Max

Wow, you are still on Monterey? You might want to update before you get too far behind.

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(02-08-2024 02:25 PM)KeithB Wrote:  Wow, you are still on Monterey? You might want to update before you get too far behind.

Too far behind for what? My own MacBook Pro still runs on 10.13 and I can use all the software I need. My wife has some software packages installed that she needs for work, and after a system update (at least some of) these might not work any more. Has happened in the past... No, as long as Apple supplies security updates, usually 5-10 years, everything stays as it is!

Regards
Max

[KeithB]

I totally get that.
My wife was a fan of Mojave, but wanted some online app to work better with Safari, so we upgraded. Now she keeps running into issues with software - We had to get Office 365, since her ancient office would not work anymore.

The point is that you might want to use Firefox instead of Safari, since Safari is tied into the OS.

[PeterP]

Thanks for all the posts, its seems that either VBox and/or Windows 10 could be the issue. The performant systems use different virtual machines and all use Windows 7.

I will try to find a Windows 7 somewhere and give it a go.

Especially as I have tried the same set-up on the M1 Pro Apple hardware to even more disastrous results, but there I was putting it more on the apple chip vs intel chip and that the software is not yet fully compatible (incl VBox).

I just _really_ like the price of VBox when compared with Parallel for example, which is competing with Adobe reader for "system upgrades", and even new version that they constantly want to sell you.

Will try the Win7 idea and report back.

Thanks again!

[Maximilian Hohmann]

(02-08-2024 09:21 PM)PeterP Wrote:  I just _really_ like the price of VBox when compared with Parallel for example...

Try UTM. Its costs nothing and comes with Windows 7 pre-installed.