Virtual PC question?

Question

I am currently redeveloping my website to bring it to today standard with a bit of php & css.
(I am not a web designer! but like coding sometimes) and all was going well with Safari, Firefox and IE 5 for Mac. That was until I ask a friend to check my progress on his XP machine and IE7.
So I decided to revive an old PC and installed XP pro on it.
With the IE6 from the box, all was worst than on IE7 screen shot provided by my friend. Dam
I discovered the MS was doing Vitual PC 2004/2007 and that looks like a great option to load multiple OS and browser versions on a single machine.
Although this PC is a bit prehistoric, it might just work but it makes such a racket that I looked into the Mac version to carry on working on my PB which has been the only machine in the home for few years now.
MS was doing a Virtual PC v7 for mac PPC that comes with XP Home.
I was wondering if like the Windows version, VPCv7 allows to run more than one MS.OS as I have few old MS.OS discs lying around.
I will be happy to go hunting for a Mac version, just to be able to work in silence.
I will be please to hear from developers and their experiences, and what are the pro and con of the these two solutions.
Many thanks
Laurent
PS: I know I am a few years late on the topic, sorry

Answer 1

My question has been posted a while ago, and got little answers regarding this issue.
I read the few thread on VPC and MAMP but with little answers. The probably censured MAMP forum, is particularly bad, i.e if you can't work it out, buy MAMP pro, or some VPC forum comment, I tried and gave up.
Well I have found almost the full answer by myself after lots of try and errors.
I decided to share it with you as almost nothing is available apart some vague hints in a couple of thread that seems to be addressed to some expert techs with editing .conf files etc,....
I am not very familiar with all the settings in Leopard and Windows.
I also tried to use the PHP install from Leopard, but crashed my system as I am ignorant with Terminal.
It took me quite a while to get my system working again. In fact 4 installs from the Retail disk (10.5.0), as the erase install doesn't erase at all, and it all went very buggy. (I wonder how can an OS end up in shops with a system that wasn't working at all). I now have made a back-up of what seems to be an almost stable but fragile install of Leopard.
Anyway lets move on.
So I tried for once to be a bit more methodical.
1/ Trying to connect from another computer to MAMP installed the PB.
This is how I managed to do it.
My powerbook is connected to the internet through a wireless router using the Airport.
I was at my girl friend house, so I also used her emac also connected to the same router.
A friend came by with a PC, and double checked with it too.
I initially tried to access the MAMP installed on the PowerBook from the eMac.
An old eMac 700mhz with Tiger installed.
First I needed to allow Web Sharing.
In System Preferences (mac) choose,
Sharing>Web Sharing "On"
(The address given to access the Powerbook, can change in function of how many devices are connected to the router, so you must check this before connecting. Let say 192.168.1.7)
To be able to access MAMP folders I needed to add
MAMP to the firewall as +Allow incoming connection+ in Leopard.
Once I was satisfied that it was possible, I tried the opposite connection, and installed MAMP on her computer.
_In Tiger I opened some ports too_
In Sharing, firewall, I clicked
New>>> for Port Names> Other
TCP port Numbers:8888
UDP port Numbers:8888
Description: mamp
I haven't tried MySQL but I believe that one might need to open the corresponding ports in the firewall.
Now I knew the right address to access MAMP from another computer.
http://192.168.1.7:8888/MAMP/
2/ I focused of the VPC connection which was still not working, while I was able to have access to the internet from fresh install.
I first added VPC to the firewall as +Allow incoming connection+ in Leopard.
I am not sure this was necessary but I did it.
I was able to connect to the emac's MAMP from VPC but not to my own PB MAMP where VPC is installed. So I knew it was a problem about connecting to self. I believe it was an issue about the IP. So I decided to try to connect to the net from VPC differently.
In System Preferences allow:
Sharing>Internet Sharing "On"
in my case I choose
"Share your connection from" >Airport,
"To Computer using" > Ethernet.
Then in Virtual PC:
I select the system I want to use (let's say Windows XP professional) which is the default name from fresh install.
I click "Settings"
A window open called +Setting for Windows XP professional+.
Select
Networking>Enable networking>Virtual Switch
You will be probably asked to restart Windows. Do it.
At the bottom of the window called Setting there is a button called
+Open Application Preferences+ open it
Select
Networking>Virtual Switch Preferences> Build-In-Ethernet
and click Done.
You can now start Windows and connect to http://192.168.1.7:8888/MAMP or any other folder in htdocs installed on the PB, and still have access to the internet.
I believe this is only possible with an internet connection so that an IP is provided for Web Sharing.
I haven't tried with sharing internet connection from ethernet to ethernet.
This will do for me for now, and will be able to avoid all the FTP with an online server every time one edits a file. I was amazed at the near silence to my question about VPC and MAMP in this forum and elsewhere.
Almost like a dirty secret.....
I hope this will help others an save them precious time playing around
Cheers