virtualbox.org

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017), 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7, 48 GB 2400 MHz DDR4, Radeon Pro 580 8192 MB, 2.12 TB Fusion Drive. 8TB external HDD partitioned 3 ways for Time Machine and two different storage drives. As a newcomer to VB and having read earlier topics on what to give the guest VM in the way of resources I thought that it would be a good idea to get the advice of seasoned users. I am a light user except when flying X Plane, and plan on giving 1or 2 cores and 10 GB Ram to MS-DOS (Harpoon II) or Win 7/XP. I would only ever be running 1 VM at any time. ANY advice is welcome.

A342

ACW342 wrote:I am a light user except when flying X Plane, and plan on giving 1or 2 cores and 10 GB Ram to MS-DOS (Harpoon II)

If you stick with the templates for the various guest operating systems you won't go far wrong. MS-DOS won't know what to do with the 2nd core or with 99% of the 10GB RAM! It will only need one core and at most 32MB RAM.

If you have the 32bit version of Windows XP/7 then 2 cores and 2GB RAM should be more than sufficient, with the 64bit version of Windows 7 you could go to 4GB RAM as you have plenty of it!

-Andy.

The advice regarding DOS is sound (pointless to give a 16bit single threaded OS that much RAM or cores), but XP and Win7 can benefit from being given more than the deliberately conservative template requests. I'd give both OS's 2 cores and 2GB RAM, 128MB graphics RAM. 32GB dynamic VDI.

Bear in mind however that this advice assumes that you'll be installing XP or Win7 yourself.

Andyp73, mpak, Many thanks for your speedy replies. Yes I will be installing these myself and following your great advice. I will let the forum know how I get on. I'm not a computer expert, just a curious person who's progressed over the years through a C64, Amiga A500, several home built PCs but have now settled down with an iMac (yes, I'm an Apple fan boy (though at 69 I don't think 'Boy' quite fits me.)) Again, thanks for your help.

A342