He installed Windows 95 in a PS2 and confirmed why it is one of Sony’s most indomitable consoles

Someone set out to take a PS2 to the limit: to operate a desk operating system In the legendary Sony console. He got it, although not precisely in the way many could imagine. And he didn’t stop there. He also tried to operate a game as mythical as ‘Doom’.

The idea sounds simple: take an ancient operating system and make it work on a console two decades ago. However, chow our 3D games colleagues collectjust look a little more closely to understand why that combination, in reality, is almost impossible.

The experiment that led an operating system to a console limit

The PlayStation 2 was market in 2000 with a custom -designed architecture for video games. Its processor, the Emotion Engineruns about 300 MHz and works with a set of instructions different from that used by the personal computers of the time. Next to him, Windows 95 —Caszado in 1995 – was created to function in X86 processorsas the Intel 386 or 486 classics.

Since the PlayStation 2 could not directly execute Windows 95, a good idea was to simulate a compatible computer within the console itself. And that is exactly what he did The YouTube channel Metrabyte. Did not turn to a native installer – because it does not exist – but to the standard installation of Windows 95 within Bochsan X86 architecture emulator.

To put it, the youtuber loaded a version of Bochs adapted for the console, connected a USB keyboardand started the process. At first he used a USB memory to advance with the installation of Windows 95. But he soon found an obvious bottleneck: the USB port of the PS2 barely reaches 1.5 MB/s.

To avoid this, he ended up choosing a more handmade solution: moving the files to an old IDE hard drive – rescued from an IMAC and mounted on an external housing – that connected to the console.

Windows 95 was not designed to execute from an environment emulated on a console, much less from such limited storage units. Each step required a lot of time. The process lasted a good part of the night. The author himself calculates that around 10 amalthough he admits not knowing exactly how long it took.

But the system finally started. Windows 95 was on the screen. With your colors, your desk, your starting bar. He even managed to open Paint. The keyboard worked, although USB mouse was not recognized. The fluidity was minimal. And when he tried to execute ‘Doom’, one of his original ideas, the system simply could not with him.

Images | Metrabyte

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