Virtual PC

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Virtual PC is an IBM pc emulator. It was initially created by Connectix as a Macintosh program. Later it was ported to Windows 95/NT 4.0. At that point it was bought by Microsoft.

Virtual PC has since split to include the Virtual Server program.

As the name implies, Virtual PC emulates an IBM PC.

Versions

Macintosh

  • Virtual PC 1.0
  • Virtual PC 2.0
  • Virtual PC 3.0
  • Virtual PC 4.0

PC

  • Virtual PC 5.0
  • Virtual PC 5.1

Microsoft years

  • Virtual PC 2004
  • Virtual PC 2007

Virtual Server

  • Virtual Server 2005
  • Virtual Server 2005R2

Hyper-V

  • Windows 2008 server with Hyper V

Initially Virtual PC was built for playing legacy video games under new operating systems, Hence the SoundBlaster 16 support. However once Microsoft realized that it could be used to support legacy OS's, and of course test development they bought out the company. Now insted of their developers having dozens of test machines, they can quickly test within Virtual PC.


Depending on the version, the emulated hardware has slightly changed over the years breaking backwards compatability with older OS's.

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