Jamming Windows 95 onto a PS2, goes about as well as you might expect, but the Sisyphean struggle is still compelling viewing
We've all seen countless attempts by people trying to run older console games on a PC, either through reverse engineering the code or the use of emulators, but one plucky hardware modder has decided that the time was ripe to do the reverse: Get an old games console to become a PC by running Windows.
Okay, so the operating system in question just happens to be Windows 95, so it's not exactly what you'd call recent, but when you consider that the hardware chosen for the attempt was a PlayStation 2, the choice of software is perhaps more understandable. Anyway, the foolhardy brave modder who undertook the task was modding YouTube channel MetraByte (via Hackaday).
The detailed video breaks down the necessary stages required to get a 25-year-old console to run Windows, and it goes as well as you imagine it would. First of all, Windows 95 is designed to be run on an x86 processing platform, but Sony's second generation of PlayStation doesn't sport any such chips. Its main CPU is MIPS-based, so the first port of call for MetraByte was getting a suitable x86 emulator installed.
Was that smooth sailing? Absolutely not, but if it only took a few clicks and installs here and there, the video wouldn't be half as entertaining. I can remember the pains of trying to install Windows 95 on decent PCs of that era, and it was never a quick or easy process, so a good chunk of MetraByte's video concerns the trials and tribulations of getting the Playdows 95 machine (or should that be WinStation 95?) to just recognise everything.
For example, despite multiple attempts at getting the hotch-botch of software to recognise the attached mouse, the humble Playdows 95 machine just wouldn't play ball with a rodent. It was, however, happy enough with a keyboard-gamepad, though I use 'happy' in its loosest possible sense.
MetraByte's ultimate goal wasn't just to get a PS2 to run Windows 95, though. What's the most common application that all these kinds of hacks/mods aim to run? Yes, that's right: Doom. The thing is, while Doom can be played on just a keyboard (and I have distant memories of myself doing so in the 1990s), it really needs to be played with a mouse to be enjoyable.
In the end, the mouse problem was the least of MetraByte's worries, as Doom just didn't want to work properly.
This isn't the first attempt we've seen of someone trying to get an old console to run Windows 95, as you may remember the Nintendo DS one from last year. That just about worked, and while it's hard to say which of the two attempts was the more successful, I just like the fact that somebody somewhere is looking at any old hardware and thinking, "I bet I can get Windows to run on it." I mean, that's essentially what Microsoft is doing with its whole everything's an Xbox kinda schtick.
Now, I wonder if I can Windows 3.1 to run on my old Game Boy?