Windows 95 Runs on a PlayStation 2, But This Modded Console Can’t Play Doom

Surprisingly, over on the MetraByte channel, there’s a whole saga of trying to coax Windows 95 and Doom onto a PS2. Yep, the ancient Sony PlayStation 2. Jace, who runs the channel, somehow thought it’d be a fun adventure or something. Spoiler: Doom didn’t quite make the cut. But hey, you could at least mess around with the Windows apps for a bit.

Now, let’s rewind a bit—time travel anyone? Windows 95 came out in 1995 (shocker), and the PS2? That shiny gem appeared in 2000. Honestly, you’d expect the PS2 to handle Windows 95 without breaking a sweat, right? Well, not really. The whole ordeal of getting x86 code running on a MIPS machine was not a walk in the park. So many tech shenanigans! Jace could probably teach a course on patience by now.

And yeah, if you’re curious, Jace filmed the whole thing. Managed to squeeze all those hours into a nice little half-hour video. Seriously, kudos.

Okay, picture this: a modded PS2, some game controller featuring a QWERTY keypad. Oh, and let’s not forget the USB stick and hard drives thrown into this mix. Crafty, huh? Jace pieced together all these bits and bobs to try conjuring Windows 95 magic. I mean, the list of stuff they packed was wild—PlayStation .ELF files, DOSBox and Bochs emulators, some virtual DOS boot disk—like a geek’s recipe gone rogue.

First, DOSBox was being its stubborn self, and about “47 attempts” later—how Jace kept count, I’ll never know—they switched over to Bochs. That one’s more a slow-and-steady kind of emulator, so I’m told.

The tale only gets better. Every step seemed to fight back: sluggish loading, read errors, mounting issues, the lot of it! If frustration had a soundtrack, this would be it. At last, Windows 95 popped up, ta-da! Talk about a brief victory lap on the PS2.

But, hooray—once it finally ticked over to the desktop, Jace tried running Paint, of all things. Was it thrilling? Probably not without a mouse. And yeah, Doom didn’t happen. Something about it felt like a modern-day myth or whatever.

If you’re into following tech escapades like this, stick around. There’s often more where this came from. Or not. It’s a bit like rolling the dice.