Pear PC - Glossary for this Article

Glossary

A brief note on some of the terms and concepts discussed in the Pear PC article series.

Computers used in the project

Host PC - This is the physical, or "real", computer that runs the Pear PC emulator.

Host Operating System (OS) - The operating system running on the host PC. For the purposes of this guide, Microsoft Windows. Pear PC also runs on Linux for those who want to try their hand at that.

Guest PC - This is the virtual, or "emulated", computer that runs inside the Pear PC emulator.

Guest Operating System (OS) - The operating system running on the guest PC.

x86 - This refers to the Intel 'X86' processor architecture that is used by the Intel and AMD processors found inside modern IBM compatible PCs.

Power PC or "PPC" - This refers to the family of processors that are used inside modern Mac computers, e.g. the G3, G4 and G5 processors. Produced by Motorola and IBM.

Yes this does mean that IBM make the processors for computers that are not called "IBM compatible". Yes that is crazy. No its not my fault and I don't want email about it.

Software used in this project

Pear PC - this is a emulator, a program that acts as a translation layer between the host computer's hardware and the emulated hardware inside the guest machine.

TAP32 Network adapter - this is a virtual network card, used by Pear PC to provide an outlet on the host computer for the emulated network card used by the guest Operating System inside the Pear PC program. Part of the OpenVPN project.

Pear PC Control Panel - the software used to make writing the Pear PC configuration file considerably easier. There are alternative configuration file assistants out there too, but for the purposes of keeping this guide simple we're sticking with just the one here.

WinRAR - My favorite archiving tool. Available from RARlabs in both Windows and OS X flavours. Required to open many of the downloads you'll be making to get the above components.

Pear PC components.

What you should see if you take a look at all the files used by Pear PC.

ppc.exe - The Pear PC emulator program itself. This is a command line program which needs to have a working config file and various parameters handed to it in order to function. This task is made somewhat easier by using a product such as the Pear PC control panel mentioned above.

Pear PC Config file (typically named PPCcfg.cfg) - The configuration information used to start the Pear PC environment, such as how much memory to give to the emulated system, where to find the virtual hard drive, and so on.

Pear PC Virtual Hard Drive - a large file that is used to emulate a hard drive for the Pear PC guest OS to store its files and data.

Video.x - The video driver. If you needed to read this glossary to find out what this file is, then don't screw with it.

NVRAM - Short for Non-Volatile Ram. Similar to what we generally refer to as the BIOS/CMOS on an IBM compatible PC, contains minimal information needed for the hardware (virtual or real) to start up, perform some tests to ensure its in on piece and find a hard disk or CD Rom to boot from.

Operating Systems "supported" by Pear PC.

Darwin - The Unix core of Apple's flagship Operating system is available by itself.

OS X -  Apple's flagship Operating System. The reason I imagine most of you are here and reading this.

Linux - I'm linking to Mandrake Linux here, not because I'm advocating this distro especially, but because I have to link to something and I know they have a power PC version. Make sure that the Power PC version is the one you download if you wish to try Linux.

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