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Portables (Games) Classic Games (Games) Emulation (Games) Hardware Hacking Entertainment Games

x86 Emulator on PSP Runs Windows & Linux 170

Dan writes "The bochs x86 emulator has been ported to the psp, and allows for x86 disk images to be run.linux and dos images have been confirmed to work."
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x86 Emulator on PSP Runs Windows & Linux

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  • So, to ask the obvious question... How long will we have to wait before the PSP runs OS X Tiger [slashdot.org]?
  • Seriously, Taco (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:19PM (#13313339)
    Would it be so difficult to actually edit the story blurbs? You know... capitalize the beginning of a sentence? Add a couple spaces?
  • Heh (Score:4, Funny)

    by EvilMonkeySlayer ( 826044 ) on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:21PM (#13313349) Journal
    Now all they need to do is make a psp emulator for windows and the cycle shall be complete.

    Emulate x86 on a psp running windows and then emulate a psp on it and so on!

    Although it may cause one of those universe destroying events.
    Perhaps Cthulu will rise by running them recursively.
  • by kevn ( 730412 ) on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:28PM (#13313377) Homepage Journal
    Impressive, but nowhere does it say how fast this thing is. What excactly do you end up with? A 486 speed pc at best?
    • http://www.hacker.co.il/psp/bochs/ [hacker.co.il]

      Windows 95 actually runs quite well but don't expect it to be a speed demon. It takes about 10 minutes to boot but afterwards it's pretty usable. I was able to do things like: open "My computer" and browse the virtual hard drive, complete a whole game of Minesweeper and run various other applications. Now you too can get your Minesweeper fix on the go :)
    • What excactly do you end up with? A 486 speed pc at best?

      Even though I'm a nintendo fanboy, and would *never* own a PSP, a portable (pocket) 486 would mean you'd have some AMAZING games at your disposal...

      - Kings Quest games
      - Quest for Glory games

      - The Incredible Machine
      - Civilization 1/2
      - SkyRoads (*totally* addictive DOS game)
      - Doom 1/2
      - LucasArts Adventure Games
      - SimCity 2000

      And that's just to name a FEW...

      • You probably could play all these but the controller system would likely kill the gameplay. I have a ZX Spectrum emulator for my pocket PC, but the thing is next to useless since so many games require keypresses. Even mouse oriented games would be a pain, since while the PSP has an analogue thumb pad, you would be required to use pixel precise movements - something which is easy with a mouse but not so easy with your left thumb.

        Personally I wish Sony would embrace homebrew. They could do it in a way that sh

      • Doom has already been ported to the PSP, as has ScummVM for those LucasArts games. You could port FreeSci for KQ/QFG/other Sierra adventures, but since it doesn't support the newer point and click interface games and you don't have a keyboard for the older games it's not very useful.
      • Civilization 1/2
        Port FreeCiv.
        Doom 1/2
        That can be ported as well.
        LucasArts Adventure Games
        Port ScummVM.

        Emulation would suck the battery dry rather fast anyway.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Impressive, but nowhere does it say how fast this thing is. What excactly do you end up with? A 486 speed pc at best?

      I hear the same thing happens when you install Windows XP on a Pentium 4. I can't wait for Vista, then we can go back to 386... I loved my 386 DX.
  • games (Score:4, Funny)

    by albertoiii ( 86778 ) on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:28PM (#13313379)
    Yes! now I can play minesweeper and solitare on my PSP running windows 95.

    plus the bonus underwater level, i've heard its all blue with some white text.

    --- ... signature ...
  • by RazorRaiser ( 895600 ) on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:29PM (#13313382)
    It can run linux. Now you can stop asking.
  • Bah.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by cybrchrst ( 535172 ) on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:29PM (#13313384) Homepage
    This won't work for anyone that has upgraded their PSP to anything above 1.0 of the Firmware. A little detail that got left out of the article..
  • run.linux? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by game kid ( 805301 ) on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:30PM (#13313389) Homepage
    "The bochs x86 emulator has been ported to the psp, and allows for x86 disk images to be run.linux and dos images have been confirmed to work."

    For a while I thought that run.linux was the name of a new distro. You submitters, with your odd grammar ways...

    • Maybe I'm just smarter than you, but I didn't really notice. So, do stupid people win spelling bees, or are they just so useless all they can do is hang around /. all day looking for mistakes to pickup because they can't think of anything interesting to say
      • Yeah I no waht you mean. These people are always worred about like spelling and then they can't even contribute. I mean look a tthe great contribution your post made. You told him "hey you aren't making contribution!" That is a a hell of a contribution. I mean on a site with as many unique hits a day aw slashdot spelling and grammer isn't a big deal to worry about now then is it? I mean people don't judge things based on the way they are spelled and the grammar and it isn't like good spleling and gram
  • Awesome... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jace of Fuse! ( 72042 ) on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:30PM (#13313392) Homepage
    This is awesome! I can't wait to play DOS with the D-Pad and fire buttons!
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:31PM (#13313401)
    http://www.hacker.co.il/psp/bochs/ [hacker.co.il]

    Well done, you've managed to post a link to a site that has nothing to do with the creator and is widely despised in the PSP community, nevermind being full of pop-ups and ads.
    • What are these "pop-ups" of which you speak? :)

      Seriously, I just wish someone would make bochs easy to get running under Linux. I've tried and it's just not worth my time. So I keep using VMware.

      Kudos to these guys, though.

      • Qemu is simple to use [debian-adm...ration.org], and something I've fallen in love with since discovering.

        (Although I admit I have never tried VMWare)

      • What difficulties are you having? I run it all the time. I've installed both Fedora and Win2K under it.

        It is important to keep in mind that bochs is an emulator. If you like VMWare, stick with it. Bochs isn't fast.

        On the other hand, I've installed and run bochs on my Sparcbook, and it lets me run that win2K image on a Sparc machine. You can't do that with VMWare.

    • I'm a PSP owner, but not part of the homebrew community, so can you elaborate on why this particular site is despised by the community? They seem to be reporting this guy's work and putting ads all over it just like Slashdot.
      • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 13, 2005 @08:30PM (#13313605)
        1) They frequently post the same story multiple times. Ok, slashdot do this, but pspupdate managed to post this item 3 times.

        2) They have an annoying tendency of not just asking for money but also begging for it

        3) They are now running a pyramid scheme that claims to give people free PSPs

        4) They frequently fail to clearly identify the author and instead of heavily linking the authors site they will put the downloads in their download section making it look a bit like their own work

        5) The forums, if you dare look at them, attract the wrong crowd, and they are not well moderated or looked after

        6) They censor people who dare to say bad things about them

        7) They have a very strange piracy policy, they will quite happily report on pirate releases and not mod the forums while they claim that they are against it.

        I think that more or less covers it.
        • at least in my experience, they report only on hacks, not pirate releases (like "someone hacked the tenchi browser, and extracted it from the game"), but their forums are well moderated (anyone even asking where to find the former example was moderated out, for instance).
    • I hate pspupdates as much as the next fellow, but I haven't found a really great alternative (I sort of liked psp-news.dcemu.co.uk until the news poster who was blathering on about OMG TEH EMULATOR EETZ MEMORY KARDZ!!! figured out he could reformat it)... any suggestions?
  • by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Saturday August 13, 2005 @07:44PM (#13313454) Homepage Journal
    It seems the PSP is doing more and more non-video game stuff, and i love it.

    Now the question is when does that USB keyboard for it(makes it look like a blackberry) come out? That seems like an essential accessory to get with all these fun homebrew apps.

    With wireless connectivity, that + keyboard would make a nice email checker when I'm at a coffee shop. Great timing since my Handspring Visor(which looks like a pong machine compared to my PSP) just went kaput.
  • From http://www.hacker.co.il/psp/bochs/ [hacker.co.il]:

    In windows, mouse handling is extremely difficult. I suspect it has something to do with the "boost" feature windows has. Once you get the mouse moving it will keep moving in that direction even when you're trying to move to a different direction. The solution is to counter the movement by moving to the opposite direction. It's sort of like trying to push the mouse the other way in order to stop it.

    Wow, this sounds like a fun game in and of itself! :)
  • Too bad PINE is not an emulator.
  • by Busshy ( 907448 ) on Saturday August 13, 2005 @08:38PM (#13313631)
    PSPUpdates.com are a company who are ripping off the homebrew scene with loads of ads/popups and free psp pyramid schemes that are exploiting those who dont know what they are. Please stop linking to them :( Emunnoobs [blogspot.com] has a dossier on these crooks and PSP Emulation News [dcemu.co.uk] would be a much more legit site to look and post PSP Scene news. Come on slashdot newsposters.
  • this has been discussed before on the psplinux forums.

    sure, it might seem if it runs, but the actual goal is to have linux run on the actual native psp APIs.

    this is just a mere gimmick.
  • Other Systems (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BrianKStein ( 907450 )
    Now, if you can emulate Windows or Linux, couldn't you theoreticly emulate (almost) and other game console? Once someone makes a reliable Nintendo DS emulator for Linux or Windows, there would be no need for the DS. Unless of course you wanted the extremely sexy dual screens, then you WOULD have to buy a DS. Shame, I was hoping for an All-In-One console.
    • I don't think it would work out well. Even if there wasn't any problem with the frame rate, you've only got one screen going on with the psp, and I don't know how you're supposed to pull off the DS effect. It's not just a matter of having the nifty screens, it's about how much you'd be missing without two of them, and even if you got them side by side on the psp screen I don't think it would look right.
    • Yeah, sure. Good luck fitting both of the DS's 256x192 displays onto the PSP's 480x272 screen (vertically too, exactly the way players and developers work with the DS in the first place), and accurately emulating the DS's touch screen.

      Even if we're talking about a DS emulator for a desktop computer and not the PSP, it's just not going to be the same. Sure, you can sorta emulate the DS touch screen simply by displaying its screen on your monitor and interacting with it using the mouse, but it doesn't emula
      • Yeah, excellent points. My favorite games for the DS right now are Meteos and Kirby's Canvas Curse, and I just can't imagine playing any of them in emulation (certainly not on a PSP, but not on a PC either with the mouse being used to emulate the stylus). It just wouldn't be the same.
      • Why, it's easy! Just hack the PSP to support USB graphics tablets! That way you can use them in the Bochs emulation, and in turn you can then use it, in turn, in the DS emulation!

        Though, let's see... A PSP, a really slow PC emulator running a really slow DS emulator, plus a graphics tablet... hmm, that sounds like a really expensive and really slow way of playing DS games, not to even mention a clumsy one. Warioware at 1 frame per minute, all in a neat travel-compact form! (People sometimes find people pl

    • if you can emulate Windows or Linux, couldn't you theoreticly emulate (almost) and other game console?

      If you've got a system that has a hard time running Windows 95, you don't have enough effective speed to run most other game consoles under it. You might be able to run an Atari 2600 or maybe an NES, but not the SNES. Emulating a Nintendo DS or any other recent console is going to take eleet programming to run well on even the newest hardware, much less a recent console. Don't even think about trying to run
      • Re:Other Systems (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Dwedit ( 232252 )
        Actually, it is much more CPU intensive to emulate the Atari 2600 than the SNES. And most modern NES emulators run much slower than ZSnes. Even the speedy NES emulators, like Nesticle and Loopynes will far too slow to even consider. This is Bochs we're talking about here, and on a High-Speed pentium 4, you can't get a decent framerate even in the fastest emulators.
    • "Unless of course you wanted the extremely sexy dual screens, then you WOULD have to buy a DS. Shame, I was hoping for an All-In-One console."

      Or unless you wanted a working touchscreen, a built-in microphone, and the ability to play ad-hoc or WiFi games against other DS owners. Or a framerate higher than 2 fps. Other than that, you'd be good. ;)
  • os x? (Score:2, Funny)

    by NickMc2000 ( 614182 )
    So have they gotten osx to work on it yet?
  • Don't most emulators (or ports of emulators) take a very long time to do? (for example the PSX emulator ePSXe still isn't complete, even after the PSone is far outdated)
  • can it emulate an xbox?
  • The ScummVM Port for the Nintendo DS is probably bigger news than this and works perfect, heres the ScummVM Port [dcemu.co.uk] link.

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