What is RealPC 1.1?

When visiting a computer store, it’s hard not to start lusting after all those DOS and Windows games. We love our Macs, but come on, DOS is a premier gaming platform, and we need those games. There are at least two possible solutions to this dilemma. One option is to invest $400 to $800 in a DOS expansion card. The other is to simply plunk down 80 bucks and take home a copy of RealPC from Insignia Solutions.

RealPC is a scaled-down version of Insignia’s SoftWindows with only DOS installed and optimized for games. It was designed to emulate a real Intel Pentium with MMX. RealPC supports joysticks and Sound Blaster sound cards for optimum gaming compatibility, and it recognizes all the Mac’s peripheral devices. Plug in your microphone, mouse (or joystick), CD-ROM drive, SCSI drives, printer, and modem with little fuss. You also can easily buy a copy of Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 and install it on top of DOS.

To put RealPC through its paces, we installed the program on both a PowerBook 3400c/200 (to check its ability to work on a slow hard drive) and a Power Computing PowerTower Pro fitted with a Newer Technology MAXpowr Pro CPU daughtercard (250MHz PowerPC 750 processor). During installation, RealPC creates a virtual DOS drive on part of your hard drive.

You can change the size of this virtual DOS drive depending on how much of your hard disk you want dedicated to DOS programs. The minimum space required is 40MB, plus 10MB for various system components, but we used 150MB in order to install all the games we wanted to play.

Setup on the desktop computer was easy, requiring barely a glance at the supplied QuickStart guide. A problem arose, however, with the PowerBook. The RealPC emulator wouldn’t recognize the PowerBook’s internal CD-ROM drive, and the manual offered little help in the matter. We finally tricked RealPC into recognizing the drive by specifying it as a shared folder in the program’s Preferences dialog box. After that, everything went according to plan. To help get you started, Insignia bundles a CD, called Best of 3D Action Games. The CD contains 15 shareware versions of slightly dated DOS action titles such as Doom, Rise of the Triad, and Dark Forces.

There’s no getting around the need for beefy processing power and RAM to get the equivalent of even an old ’486 PC on a Mac. Our PowerBook had 48MB of RAM, and RealPC in its standard setup used 25MB of it. Video display was OK, but sounds sometimes were a little choppy. The situation was much better on our high-end Mac OS clone, where RealPC got 35MB of RAM and a faster processor, too. Performance moved well into low-end Pentium (75 to 100MHz) territory. Video display was quick, action was first class, and sounds were smooth and clear.

If you have a fast enough Mac (one with a 132MHz 604e or faster, or a 180MHz 603e or faster) you will be pleased with RealPC’s performance. Those with more humble Macs, or those who want to run beefy programs may be disappointed, however. At the very least, RealPC might help relieve DOS envy when gazing on all those software titles displayed at your local computer stores.

Steinberg, Gene. (February 1998). RealPC. MacAddict. (pg. 64).

Download RealPC 1.1 for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.1

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver