How to install Windows NT on PowerPC in DingusPPC

This page will document how to emulate Windows NT 4.0 on PowerPC. To do this, we have two options: DingusPPC and Dolphin (yes, the GameCube/Wii emulator!). QEMU, which I'd normally use, currently does NOT run NT 4.0 on PowerPC (only MIPS and x86.)

For this tutorial, I'll be using DingusPPC since its faster and significantly easier to set up. DingusPPC is a Macintosh PowerPC emulator similar to SheepShaver/PearPC, but is much more accurate. Thanks to the maciNTosh project, we're able to run NT on a Mac with ease!

Prerequisites

• DingusPPC. We'll be using DingusPPC-NT as its been modified to allow NT 4 to run. Extract the zip anywhere.
• Next we'll need an ISO with maciNTosh integrated. A custom ISO by neozeed with NT 4.0 Service Pack 2 is available here. Place the ISO in the DingusPPC directory.
  • For those wanting to run NT 3.51, you can also download that here. This ISO comes with Service Pack 5. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find any NT 3.5 builds for this.)
• Finally, we need two ROMs - the iMac G3 ROM and MACH64. Download the iMac ROM here, and the MACH64 ROM here. Again, put this in the DingusPPC directory.
• qemu-img to actually make the disk image.

Starting up

First, lets create our disk image. We need qemu-img, which of course, comes with QEMU. You don't strictly need to use it (anything that can make a raw disk image will work), but its what I'm using.

qemu-img create -f raw ntppc.img 2G

Now we start DingusPPC. Open up a command prompt and enter the following command. If you're familiar with QEMU the syntax is a bit similar, but there are some differences:

dingusppc.exe -m imacg3 -b imacboot.u3 --rambank1_size=128 --hdd_img=ntppc.img --cdr_img=nt40wks-en_grackle_0.05.iso

Breakdown of this command:

• -m imacg3 specifies the machine to emulate, in our case, the iMac G3.
• -b imacboot.u3 specifies the boot ROM to use.
• --rambank1_size=128 specifies the amount of RAM in RAM bank 1. We set this to 128 MB.
• --hdd_img=ntppc.img is our HDD image.
• Finally, --cdr_img=nt40wks-en_grackle_0.05.iso is our CD ROM drive.

If everything went well, you should hear the familiar Mac startup sound. The system will take a few seconds to start up.