SoftPC and SoftWindows were software emulators of x86 hardware. The emulators were developed by Insignia Solutions. Available originally on UNIX

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 workstations to run MS-DOS

MS-DOS

MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

, the software eventually was ported to Mac OS

Mac OS

Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...

 and also gained the ability to run Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 software. Besides Mac OS, supported platforms included SGI IRIX

IRIX

IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...

, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, NeXT

NeXT

Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...

, Motorola 88000

Motorola 88000

The 88000 is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola. The 88000 was Motorola's attempt at a home-grown RISC architecture, started in the 1980s. The 88000 arrived on the market some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS...

, DEC VAX

VAX

VAX was an instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid-1970s. A 32-bit complex instruction set computer ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC's various Programmed Data Processor ISAs...

, DEC ULTRIX

Ultrix

Ultrix was the brand name of Digital Equipment Corporation's native Unix systems. While ultrix is the Latin word for avenger, the name was chosen solely for its sound.-History:...

, and others.

Bundles of SoftPC with Windows (3.x, 95, 98) were called SoftWindows, although it was possible to install Windows into the basic SoftPC environment along with some special utilities provided by Insignia to achieve the same effect.

Beginning in 1996, Insignia commanded the niche for this product area, but it soon faced heavy competition from Connectix

Connectix

Connectix Corporation was a software and hardware company, noted for having released innovative products that were either made obsolete as Apple Computer incorporated the ideas into system software, or were sold to other companies once they become popular...

 with their Virtual PC product. Insignia sold the product line to FWB Software in October 1999 in order to focus on supplying implementations of Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

 for the mobile device market. FWB continued to sell SoftWindows until March 2001. FWB Software also marketed a separate version of the software that did not include a bundled copy of Windows, called RealPC

RealPC

RealPC is a Macintosh program that emulates an x86 PC, allowing the use of PC-DOS, Windows 2000, Windows 95, and Windows 98. This software limits on which operating system you can use. If you try to install Linux, Windows Me, Windows XP or MS-DOS, it will stop the emulation and ask you to...

, until 2003.

When Microsoft released Windows NT

Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...

 it included a subsystem ("WOW" - Windows on Windows

Windows on Windows

In computing, Windows on Windows - commonly referred to by its acronym WOW or WoW - is a software component of 32-bit versions of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems that provides limited support for running legacy Win16 applications - applications written for Windows 3.x...

, later NTVDM

Virtual DOS machine

Virtual DOS machine is Microsoft's technology that allows running legacy DOS and 16-bit Windows programs on Intel 80386 or higher computers when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware.-Overview:...

) for running virtualized 16-bit Windows (x86) programs. However, they had also made changes to Windows to allow it to run on alternative processors (Alpha

DEC Alpha

Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...

, PowerPC

PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

), and for these an emulation layer was needed for programs compiled for Intel processors. Customized versions of Insignia's core emulation system were produced to this end, however the alternative NT architectures never became widely used.