Windows 95 Partially Runs on a PlayStation 2 — But Modded PS2 Fails to Run Doom

So, there’s this video by Jace from MetraByte, right? They’re into this quirky tech stuff and thought, “Why not try booting up Windows 95 and Doom on a PS2?” Just imagine. Anyway, so Jace is wrestling with this ancient tech, and for a brief moment, Windows 95 actually boots up. But Doom? Nope, that was a no-go.

Thinking about it now, feels kind of nuts. Both Windows 95 and the PS2 are like fossils, right? Windows 95? Boom, 1995. And PS2 waltzes in during Y2K. You’d think with PS2 being the younger, it would just, I dunno, breeze through this stuff. Nah, not so much. Jace had to deal with a bunch of tech quirks. Something about getting x86 to play nice with Sony’s MIPS tech – whatever, brain overload!

Jace squished a ton of tinkering into this video, less than 30 minutes really, but the whole thing? It took ages! They’ve got this modded PS2, a controller with a QWERTY keypad (gotta love that clicky sound, right?), USB sticks, hard drives, everything but the kitchen sink. And there are these .ELF files – homebrew something or other. Anyway, Jace throws DOSBox and Bochs into the mix. DOSBox fails, so hello Bochs! Call it Plan B? Or was it C by then?

Watching Jace was kinda like watching paint dry, only you want the paint to somehow end up as a masterpiece. It test your patience, man. Old OS on this MIPS thing? Painful. Errors flying everywhere – “System can’t read this, can’t write that…” Sound familiar? Somehow, they get to that iconic Windows 95 screen. It’s like discovering a buried treasure chest full of… nothing.

Oh, Jace did get Paint to work! Imagine using it without a mouse though. Yeah, that thrilling. Doom95? Pipe dream. But hey, gotta credit the grind, right? 14 hours of digital archaeology just to draw a pixel or two. I mean, why? But really, why not?