Windows 2000 Pro up and running on the PS3

[FantasyGhost]

Emulated with YDL that is...

Yup it is real and took me all day. Got Qemu built, installed, and running in YDL and installed Windows 2000 Pro into a virtual machine then installed Wizardry Gold in Windows 2000 Pro. Complete with Soundblaster 16 sound. Used the Gimp in YDL to grab the screens. At any rate another milestone for the PS3! The YDL desktop is 50 inch HDTV so W2K is like about a 30 inch HD window?? Who said the PS3 was boring...http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r111/grimreaperthx1138/w2kdesktop.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r111/grimreaperthx1138/w2kprowizgold.jpg
PlayStation.com board (http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3&message.id=1072728#M1072728)

[frosty]

Man, it's nice to see people trying out all the various OS's on PS3. Wonder what the performance is like.

[CrumCon]

i hope Apple would release an OS X for PS3, since its architecture is really familiar with OS X

anyway, this is nothing special

[FantasyGhost]

Well, as we all know all Microsoft software is all bloatware. 2000 pro certainly runs better than I expected and I have not attempted any tweaking of the environment yet. You certainly are not gonna do everything simultaneously you do now on your pc running it in a VM, but that was not the point here.

One goal here was to get access to a full featured web browser in HD without any of the limitations we have right now such as no Flash support in PPC linux and the inability to play windows media stuff in the PS3 browser like highlights on nhl.com on the big screen without dumping out any more dough for a clunky pc connection of some sort. I wanted it to be HD.

Second goal was to see if it was feasible to get any emulators that are windows only running to see if they were usable such as Visualboyadvance. I did not get that far yet.

I think considering the bloated nature of windows in general 2000 runs decent enough and is certainly usable for a single application like IE or Firefox. You are not gonna run Fable that is for sure. Wizardry Gold was working decent enough but I did not get past the initial character creation and into the gameplay due to it being too late. I was running in 800x600 64k colors. Cutting that back would certainly help but I wanted to test something more stressful to start and then back off as necessary. There is likely some tweaking to be done in the VM as well such as keeping the amount of memory under the max the system actually has.

For DOS games and other consoles you would be way better off using emulators specificly designed for them that you can get to run on ppc linux like dosbox. I played Eye of the Beholder in HD within dosbox the other night and it looks, plays, and sounds great. You would never know it was in an emulator it plays so well.

Agenda for this weekend is N64 emulator of some sort (since the Wii cannot do it).

And oh yeah, it takes a long, long time to do that initial install of 2000 Pro, but then it was never that fast even on a pchttp://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3&view=by_date_ascending&message.id=1073311#M1073311

[Sephiroth_VII]

Interesting, though I prefer just using Wine...

[Garfunkel]

I wouldn't expect the performance to be that bad at all, it would be an interesting experiment, i normally just use wine too.

[Nameless]

When we can tap into the RSX things will get really interesting...

[ded5850]

I just don't get WHY the RSX drivers aren't released to the public. I mean, if the S3 is supposed to be the end-all/be-all machine that we were all sold on, and supoosedly a Living room PC, woul it not make sense to treat it as such? Let all your software out there and let the public do what they want with it is what I say. Show everybody why the PS3 is worth $600

[Garfunkel]

I just don't get WHY the RSX drivers aren't released to the public. I mean, if the S3 is supposed to be the end-all/be-all machine that we were all sold on, and supoosedly a Living room PC, woul it not make sense to treat it as such? Let all your software out there and let the public do what they want with it is what I say. Show everybody why the PS3 is worth $600

The problem is, to Sony, if they and nvidia provided drivers and support for the RSX and unlocked it via firmware, they feel they could suffer profit loss because some devs will make ps3 games that run on Linux, making for lower interest in commercial ps3 games. Obviously this is a stupid decision for Sony because PC has had non-commercial games since it first entered homes and it has a thriving industry of commercial games.

Nvidia would want to provide support/drivers for RSX, nothing to hurt them by doing so except for possible legal action from Sony who has many rights to the RSX.

I think eventually they will work something out, till then we will have to use generic 2d drivers which have crap support for 3d and reversed-engineered 3d drivers.

[hevymac]

If people have access to RSX, they will not only have access to the pirates dream but also be able to write VERY powerful viruses for use on PS3. Unfortunatley thats life eh.

[Garfunkel]

If people have access to RSX, they will not only have access to the pirates dream but also be able to write VERY powerful viruses for use on PS3. Unfortunatley thats life eh.

No, not really.

Linux is ridiculously secure compared to other OS's, and if you mean viruses for the gameos then that would be very very difficult, only the very very best of hackers would bother to write viruses that can "cross" the hardware layers to effect the gameos, and then theres CELL's security and firmware updates.

Also, it makes no real sense to assume that unlocking the RSX will allow hackers to hack the ps3 any easier then now.

[AbominatioN]

If people have access to RSX, they will not only have access to the pirates dream but also be able to write VERY powerful viruses for use on PS3. Unfortunately thats life eh.

Since when, the access to the GPU affects the power of a virus !? Unless by "power" you mean a huge 3D face with every imaginable fx (8x AA, GI, normal mapping, soft shadows,...) that pops up on your screen when you get infected, saying in (7.1 channels) godly voice "dude... your ass is mine!" while laughing at you...

Ah... the wonderful reality of Hollywood movies... :duh:

[Garfunkel]

Since when, the access to the GPU affects the power of a virus !? Unless by "power" you mean a huge 3D face with every imaginable fx (8x AA, GI, normal mapping, soft shadows,...) that pops up on your screen when you get infected, saying in (7.1 channels) godly voice "dude... your ass is mine!" while laughing at you...

Ah... the wonderful reality of Hollywood movies... :duh:

LOL +rep! so true.

I think he got CELL and RSX mixed up, because the GPU has nothing to do with it, especially on ps3.

[hevymac]

I thought I read it in an interview somewhere...... but hey :shrug: my bad if wrong :laugh:

[Garfunkel]

it's fine, you might have just confused cell with rsx, easy mistake.

or the interview was bull.

[AbominatioN]

I thought I read it in an interview somewhere...... but hey :shrug: my bad if wrong :laugh:

Don't worry about it. Every day, we all learn something new. :hugegrin:

Just for your info... Virus power comes from clever programming. A powerful virus uses stealth techniques to hide itself, makes it difficult to remove, and spreads itself really fast. The damage varies on what the programmer wants to do. Like erasing files/HDDs, eating resources (memory/HDD space/network bandwidth), ...

No GPU or powerful CPU is needed to code a very good virus. Just skillful programming. And of course, widely spread insecure OS (windows) + apps (internet explorer, outlook express, ...) :smoke:

[Garfunkel]

and poor anti viral products like nortan antiperformance.

[GTAce]

and poor anti viral products like nortan antiperformance.

:laugh: +rep! This is simply so true. LOL