Do SR4 nodes matrix rules still have virtual machine equivelents please?

Being lazy and avoiding rules clutter as still on SR3 game. Iam and hope fully will continue to avoid reading the SR4 matix rules en mass to avoid the brain attic having critical fail in game.

I have a background game idea from my campaign I was thinking of posting up similar to my sig tag as a resource.

Just need to know if I should keep it SR3 or bother converting to SR4.

Thanks in advance.

I would be better equipped to answer your question if I knew what a "virtual machine" was exactly. I've played almost exclusively 4th Ed, with very little 3rd experience (a MUSHclient).

If it's teh same as IRL a virutal machine is using a computer to emulate another - an exampel would be having a Linux-installed PC running a virtual Windows-installed PC.

It let you run bizarre OS or software without havign to jump though the hoops of buying the weird harwxare they're supposed to run onto. It also hlps making sure the real maching doesn't catch a virus or other nasty things - whatver troubles will be sodftware-only and confined toteh virtual machine.

The cost is that running the emulation is eating a good chunk of teh real machine's processing power.

I have no idea what you mean. There pretty much are no real-world equivalents to anything in the SR4 computer rules, and trying to think about SR computers as if they were R-W computers just leads to madness.

If I'm understanding at best, no there's nothing for "Virtual Machine" equivalents in Shadowrun at all. At the base any operating system will pretty much run anything, and at the GM's option data files may be specific to one brand of OS (like Sony's or Renraku's) but otherwise can be decoded.

And as kzt said, trying to think of SR4 computers as the real world counterparts is opening the door to insanity. Do remember that the tech industry of Shadowrun has reinvented itself twice within a span of 50 years.

There is a mention in the Dissonance section of certain dissonants torturing other matrix users in their 'dissonant virtual machines'. Sadly, that's literally all it says.

In SR3, Virtual Machines were a host pretending to be an easier host with faked files and such dangling in it. Without conducting a specific test, the decker was unable to tell that it was a fake and the files were junk or fakes. After the decker realized it was a fake, they could break through that "virtual machine" into the real host (or the next layer of the onion.)

As far as I know, there is no SR4 version of this, but I don't know SR4 as well as SR3.

Honeypots are fake files in SR4. See Unwired.
Nothing stopping you from creating a "Fake System" for a Node, however. It is just another system as far as node architecture is concerned.

Could be tricky to dupicate the hardware and software architechture of the Golden Hyper Temple (trust me the name is meant to suck) then in SR4 with out knowing both sets of rules equally.

I guess I could do it with a linear node pattern with a three stacked node hardward and fluff the Virtual Machine explaination.

The crunch is not vital I suppose, but I like my creations aldente.

Any takers on those who know both systems well enough to advise?