Update: 3-16-06 - It's official, Colin Nederkoorn has verified that narf2006 has successfully booted XP on the MacTel platform according to the rules of the contest. Narf2006 has won over $13,000, I expect that we will see the instructions out in a matter of days.
A little background first: Colin Nederkoorn created a contest and a web site to challenge the Technology community to see who could be the first person to boot XP on a MacTel platform. The rules associated with the contest are listed below:
- Instructions must boot Windows XP (at least), not Vista or any other version of Windows.
- Windows must be able to coexist with Mac OS X and each system may not interfere with the operation of the other (basically a traditional dual boot system where one OS is running at a time)
- Your method, upon starting the computer, must offer the user to boot either OS X or Windows XP (hint: GRUB / LILO)
- The first person to post complete instructions, including pictures of the boot process to The Forum will be the winner. Instructions will be peer reviewed once they are received and once the solution is guaranteed working, the prize money will be transferred via paypal
- You give this website the rights to post your solution exclusively
- If it is determined impossible to boot Windows on the Mac by
March 23, 2006March 30, 2006 (7 day delay), all donations will be donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If you donated prior to 2006/01/23 2:10pm CST, and you do not wish to donate to charity, I will return your money minus the paypal fee - You cannot use virtualization software such as Xen or VMWare
Here is the latest, it appears that narf2006 may be the the winner of the contest! narf2006 has provided a video of the MacTel desktop bootong XP. The video leads me to believe that narf2006 may have actually accomplished what some thought impossible. We will wait to see if Colin confirms narf2006 claim in the coming days but I highly doubt this is a fake given the video and narf2006 reputation. If your interested in the contest or video, links are provided below.
the video (7.7MB MOV)
Read about the contest
