forums.ps2dev.org

How can i get windows on my ps2 do i need a modchip??

Wow... I mean, wow.
This is so insanely stupid I can't even think of a funny reply.


You can't. Period.


Holy shit... Wow man, wow.

hey you know what man i have seen websites with ppl doing this and i have emailed them and they are going to reply to me, i guess you dont know what your talking about

You've made your first posts to a forum on a web site dedicated to programming the Playstation 2. A person who is a regular to the forums replies saying that it can't be done. You:

a) Take the somewhat sarcastic response, and think that maybe the person knows what they are talking about.. and move on.

b) Ask more questions as to why it can't be done.

c) Go on the defensive and tell the person they have no clue.


I would have suggested you take B. Because then you may have learnt that Windows is written for a PC that has a Intel or Intel compatible CPU. That Windows has drivers to communicate with PC based video cards, USB, Hard drives, and other peripherals.

If you took B, you might have also learnt that the only way of making an operationg system designed for one cpu to run on a different cpu or computer architecture is with an Emulator (eg PearPC, Mame, etc). You might have also learnt that Emulators are very hard to write and are quite slow.

You might have also learnt that the Playstation 2 is based on a MIPS CPU with a radically different architecture. Writing a emulator to run windows on this would be painfully slow and take years of dedicated research and programming and still probably not work.

If only you picked B.

Oobles.

I'd use some sort of cutting tool to put windows on my ps2, personally.

I'd try a serious answer, even if I think this can also be a big troll. But I'm serious. Really.

Well, I'd say that, in order to run windows (maybe 3.11 could run, yeah, really), you'd need to compile and run Bochs, the open source PC emulator. Of course, a straight compilation of it would require the PS2Linux kit. But, why not.


No, this answer wasn't a troll...

... or was it ?

Believe it or not, is *IS* actually possible, more than you think.

There *IS* a MIPS cpu version of Microsoft Windows PocketPC
edition. It is available for development porting efforts, you can even
download it from mips.com on a developmental license terms, for
porting to mips-based embedded devices.

Therefore, it is possible for someone to take the time to port this
to the PS2.

However, despite what the original poster claims, I seriously doubt
anyone has done so.

But...it isn't as terribly insane concept as most would initially think.
No I take that back, it is terribly insane, but not quite so impossible. :)

Gorim

He was probably refering to Windows CE, not the more normal desktop Windows. Although I am not aware of any PS2 compatible version, there are MIPS versions of Windows CE for various palms that use the MIPS architecture. It would be interesting, but rather useless to see WCE running on the PS2. What would you run on it?

minesweeper

J.F. wrote:He was probably refering to Windows CE, not the more normal desktop Windows

Perhaps I am wrong... But I am pretty sure he wasn't referring to Windows CE.

These boards will be SO much better once Sony releases the PSBBN. No more crazy topics like this.

Yeah, because we hate it when people ask things.

Me, I like it when people ask things...though its nice that such
topics can get shuffled off into more appropriate forums.

In a way, its kinda fun, so long as mainstream forums don't
get overly polluted.

It is certain kinds of topics that reminds us that:
a) There are people in the world who want to be, or need to be,
educated.
b) Depending on which type above is asking the question, we
can be helpful or be helpfully fun. Actually, one should have
fun no matter what.

:)

ooPo wrote:Yeah, because we hate it when people ask things.

I'm didn't really say that. I just dislike people who don't bother to use common sense once in a while.

I mean, honestly, if you could use Windows on your PS2, don't you think you would hear about it? Even if it were possible, don't you think that they would try to do something to stop it? What amazes me more is that if it were possible, do you actually think people would be giving out this kind of information in a forum?

Microsoft has the power to secretly monitor everything you type and every time someone tries to steal from them (and yes, this would be considered stealing) they must be tempted to screw up your computer and make you buy another one. I know I would!

At least he asked.

I dislike people who don't bother to use common politeness once in a while.

ooPo wrote:At least he asked.

I dislike people who don't bother to use common politeness once in a while.

How so *very* Canadian of you. :)

(aside from otherwise being right on the mark about politeness to
poor newbs)

Gorim

This site is about PS2 development. I guess I just forgot this was the Off-Topic part of the forum...

Out of morbid curiosity has anyone tried compiling and running wine or X-wine on the ps2 (yes, I know its more of an API emulator than processor
), just wondered if anything ran.... runs back to DOOM on the ZXSpectrum, I love torturing hardware MUHAHAHAHA....

Wine wouldn't even compile. It can only run on x86 machines.

No, WINE can run on any system it's been ported to, which includes PPC (OSX), Sparc, and ARM.

It does require an operating system with POSIX-like APIs, so it wouldn't be feasible to port it to run under the native PS2 kernel. It wouldn't be so hard porting it to PS2/Linux.

Yeah, but I imagine when it goes to run the x86 .exe file it'll have problems.

The OSX people have gotten WINELIB to compile for OSX. This means that nearly any open source windows program can be recompiled for OSX + WINELIB. They are currently merging QEMU's x86 emulation with WINELIB to be able to run closed-source programs on OSX. The code is in the Open Darwin CVS and is called Darwine.

This same technique could be applied to the PS2 as well, but it's a lot of work. Start by altering WINELIB to allow the compiling of Windows programs you have the source to using the crosscompilers, then work on making a PS2 version of QEMU to handle the closed source programs.

If you're willing to create a full emulator, sure... anything is possible.

The speed it would run at would make it unusable, though. :)

Okay, let's start it over:

-) Yes, wine can be compiled everywhere, if you only want the winelib in order to get the toolkit and win32 api up and running somewhere, in order to link code.
-) No, wine can not be compiled everywhere, if you want to run windows's .exe files (which was the original question)

And for a x86 emulator, I'd recommand dosbox.