Running Linux and Windows on the PSP

December 30th, 2005, 19:48 Posted By: wraggster

Article posted at ExtremeTech

This feature appears in the upcoming ExtremeTech book "Hacking the PSP." Here we'll learn how to emulate a PC on the PSP, install Linux, and run Windows on the PSP.
So the PSP can do games, movies, video, music, photos, and Internet. Well, that's not enough—it should be able to run software we enjoy on our home PCs! Utilizing an open source x86 emulator called Bochs, which emulates the hardware usually found in PCs, and creating a few hard disk images with the software we want on them, you can run Linux and even Windows on your PSP!

What You Need

Hackable PSP: (i.e. it can run Homebrew apps)
Memory Stick: Enough space for Bochs files and virtual hard drive image (512 MB stick is probably plenty, but a 1 gig stick will be more utilitarian since you still have plenty of space for other stuff)
Virtual PC or VMWare: if you're going to create your own disk images ($99+ depending on what version, but there are free trials available that will suffice for this project)
Virtual DriveCreation Software: such as R-Drive Image, if you're going to create your own disk images (~$49, and there's a free trial)
Windows 95 or Windows 98: You'll need the disks or disc if you're going to install Windows
NOTE: The American PSP only has 32 megabytes of available RAM, and the emulator uses a little of that, so that's why we're sticking to Linux and lightweight versions of Windows like Windows 95 and 98.

NOTE: There is also a Macintosh emulator called Basilisk II, available for download from PS2Dev.org. Basilisk can run Mac OS 7.5 through 7.6.1, and cannot run Mac OS X, but that's not bad!

More info at that above link:

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