Description of how and why to use Sun Virtual Box in the Ham shack

1. Over the past year, there have been three QST articles that have really caught my attention.
The first was “Evolve or Die”, an OP-ED article that appeared in Feb, 2011, QST. The second
was “Windows 7 – Taking the Plunge”. This was headline piece of Steve Fords (WB8IMY)
Eclectic Technology section in the same Feb, 2011 QST. Finally, Steve published “You’ve
Come a Long Way, Ubuntu” in his October, 2011 column. Virtual Machine software answers
the challenges of these three articles.
In order to fully discuss Virtual Machines, we will need to define some terms and come to
an agreement on their meaning.
1

2. My dad, K8DWE, spent lots of time building, repairing and experimenting with transmitters.
The one that he worked on the most was his prized Globe King.
I spent countless hours repairing, upgrading etc. my Heathkit HW-101. Software may be the
new arena for many of us.
2

3. Just for arguments sake, let’s define a few terms.
3

4. Idea here – the CPU can do nothing on its’ own. Single core, quad core – doesn’t matter. It
still needs to find a way to talk to the outside world or to do a function.
4

5. It is important to try to understand where the operating system stops and the application
starts. The O/S needs to talk to the BIOS to get to all peripherals.
5

6. An application is a piece of software that performs a function. It uses resources provided by
the operating system to perform that function. Now it gets stickier. What if you have an app
that acts like an O/S?
6

7. These are the basic layers of a PC software architecture. The BIOS is hardware specific to
the mother board. The operating system communicates with the BIOS via drivers.
Applications are operating system specific and perform specified functions.
7

8. Does the BIOS HAVE to be in a ROM on the motherboard? As long as it presents correctly
to the layer calling it, it should work.
8

9. What if there were an application created in software that acted like a hardware BIOS and
then talked to the host as an application? Since this software BIOS was an application, you
could use many
9

10. Of course, there is a limit based on RAM, disk space and clock speed. HOWEVER, that limit
may be very large.
10

11. SUN Virtual Box is an Open Source product that is fully functional and outstanding!!!!
11

12. In this drawing, like in the previous one, applications “talk” to the O/S. The O/S “talks” to
the BIOS etc. One of the applications is the Sun Virtual Box that has a software BIOS. On
top of the software BIOS is the Ubuntu O/S (could have been Windows or any other O/S)
and then there are apps loaded on the Ubuntu
12

13. 13

14. Traditional approach could be more expensive or non-recoverable. Also, you really could
not compare the old against the new
14

15. With this approach, I can jump between the Windows 7 machine and the old Windows XP
machine
15

16. 16

17. 17

18. 18

19. 19

20. 20

21. 21

22. 22

23. On the virtual box website, there is software, tutorials and documentation
23

24. Easy to set up graphical interface
24

25. Keep the defaults
25

26. I have a VM for testing new releases of XP, testing Ubuntu and for testing Windows 7
26

27. The Ubuntu desktop is a graphically driven desktop with applications etc.
27

28. Using one of the free plug-ins, you can easily run Windows applications on Ubuntu. This is
DX4WIN ver 8.03 running on Ubuntu. There is also a DOS emulator
28

29. 29