Boot Camp

[ewx]

Further to my remarks on Leopard one of the reasons for buying it was to add a Windows partition to my Mac via Boot Camp.

Boot Camp comprises a partitioning tool, support for dual boot and a collection of drivers (on the Leopard install disk) for running Windows on Apple hardware. You need an Intel Mac and a sufficiently recent copy of XP or Vista. In this version only 32-bit software is supported even though I have a 64-bit CPU, but I hear that more recent Macs are shipping with 64-bit capable Boot Camp. 64-bit operation isn't particularly important for what I current want out of Windows anyway (games and the odd bit of software development).

Partitioning was perfectly easy. On booting into the Windows XP installer the keyboard didn't work initially; after I unplugged my USB card reader and rebooted it was OK, however. I'm not sure if this is Apple's bug or Microsoft's but it seems to be a common problem.

The network setup decided to apply the address I gave it to the firewire port rather than either of the ethernet ports. I disabled the firewire port (under windows) and the non-connected ethernet and it was happier. (As with my Windows/Linux dual-boot system) I'd given the Windows partition a different name and address to the MacOS partition.

SHIFT 3 on my UK keyboard produces £, which is not what I wanted; I type # much more often than £. Under Mac OS I was able to select a US keyboard layout but Windows doesn't offer me a US Apple layout (and the US layouts it does have have other keys in the wrong places).

Here's what I did to get around this:

1. Install the keyboard layout creator from http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx and run it
2. Load the Apple UK layout
3. Change £ to # and vica versa, using CTRL+ALT+3 to type #
4. Select Project->Properties and edit the name etc
5. Select Project->Test Keyboard Layout to make sure it works
6. Save the source file
7. Selected Project->Build DLL and Setup Package
8. Quit the layout creator
9. Install the new layout package
10. Go to Control Panel->Regional And Language Options->Languages and make the new keyboard layout the default

Rather surpringly the choice of keyboard layout doesn't seem to be reachable via Control Panel->Keyboard.

I installed the following things without any difficulty:

• PuTTY
• Firefox
• Windows updates (needed 2 restarts)
• IE7
• Starcraft and Brood War
• Rome: Total War
• Warcraft III
• Visual C++ 2008
• RealVNC
• DirectX SDK (March 2008)

Half Life said it didn't like my OS (it predates XP by some years) and needed a patch, but after rather fruitlessly poking around the web for the right thing (which used to be on Sierra's website but isn't any more) I installed Opposing Force and it installed a patch and ran OK anyway.

Comments

[kaet.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise that UK and US matched apart from # and £. I'm tempted, now. I've found that it's actually quite simple to type even Russian, just by brining up "Keyboard viewer", and then changing the layout. I was surprised mainly that by looking at keyboard mapper my fingers could tell which key was which, without slow, intervening conscious work.

Я люблю ⌘.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I think the distinction only being #/£ is an Apple-ism; I believe US PC keyboards differ more than that from UK PC keyboards. (Certainly UK Apple and PC keyboards differ from one another.)

My fingers don't necessarily know where a given key is on the keyboard they're using right now but if they don't their second guess is almost always right.

[nunfetishist.livejournal.com]

Isn't a UK Apple keyboard just a US Apple keyboard with £ instead of #? I seem to recall all of Apple's keyboards are just slightly localised versions of US keyboards.

[simont]

Indeed, the standard Apple UK keyboard on my Mac is a source of constant frustration to me for being in most respects a USish keyboard: " on the right of the home keys, @ over 2, \ in completely the wrong place, etc. One of these days I may yet lose my patience, get a normal USB keyboard, and find out how to make MacOS like it.

find out how...

[ewx.livejournal.com]

This might help (http://wordherd.com/keyboards/).

[pm215]

The most obvious difference between US and UK PC keyboards is that US ones have a wide return key (with only two punctuation keys between it and the L) whereas UK ones have a tall return key with three punctuation keys between it and L.
This means I tend to end up accidentally hitting Return when using a US layout, which is a particularly irritating missed first guess because it often has actual consequences...

[nunfetishist.livejournal.com]

You can get updated versions of Half Life etc by signing up for a Steam account (free) and giving Steam your CD keys. Quite a lot of work went into these "steam-only" releases. However, it does carry with it the disadvantages of using Steam.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Noted. I've not played it for years, actually l-)

[mpinna.livejournal.com]

Not sure if you're aware of Parallels (http://www.parallels.com/) but it allows you to run a virtualised Windows (or anything else) under OS X. I'm using it and am pretty impressed. It does cost money but not that much. I've not tried Boot Camp (yet) but apparently it works fine with Windows installs on there too.

[covertmusic.livejournal.com]

There's VMWare Fusion too. Dunno which is better - my work Mac is an Intel but I don't need Windows on that, and my home machine's a G4 Powerbook.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'll get one of the VMs if I need to run Windows programs at the same time as Mac ones l-)

[mpinna.livejournal.com]

Rebooting is SUCH A FAFF. When you get used to not doing so you'll never look back :-)