It seems that Windows NT naitively supported IBM's PowerPC processors (in addition to IA-32/x86). The "PowerPC Edition" did not sell much, so Micorosft discontinued the support in 1997.
Because Wii and GameCube were PowerPC-based, both can technically run Windows NT. This seems to be the main reason why this project was doable.
I think we are witnessing a historical accident materialized by obscure hardware legacies.
While my technical exploits are no where near this - I love reading about people doing odd and difficult things for fun.
(As a young teen who was obsessed with Road Rash on the Sega Game Gear, I wrote down every single save code, after every game I played, along with what I had (bike, level and cash) - after a week or so of doing this I worked out the save code and was able to give myself any level, bike or money by manually tweaking the code. I am sure that I am not the only person that discovered this, but at the time I felt like a god and enjoyed racing the later levels with the worst bikes etc. - sometimes it's just fun to do something because you can.)
There were native builds of Word and Excel for Alpha that came with 4.2 and 97, but nothing else non-x86 except for the 'pocket' versions that came with Windows CE.
The page doesn't seem to mention the Gamecube Ethernet card or the Wii's Wi-Fi support, so it might not have any working networking, so that might be a more important issue.
The same person did NT for PowerMacs[0], which was discussed earlier[1].
[0] https://github.com/Wack0/maciNTosh
[1] Windows NT for Power Macintosh (github.com/wack0)
298 points by TazeTSchnitzel 7 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 215 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40945076
It seems that Windows NT naitively supported IBM's PowerPC processors (in addition to IA-32/x86). The "PowerPC Edition" did not sell much, so Micorosft discontinued the support in 1997.
Because Wii and GameCube were PowerPC-based, both can technically run Windows NT. This seems to be the main reason why this project was doable.
I think we are witnessing a historical accident materialized by obscure hardware legacies.
Nobody asked for that, I love it, this is brilliant, and like art.
Great work!
Has anyone tried this on real hardware? I've searched for videos on YouTube but haven't found any.
Would love to see it running before I go searching for my old GameCube to try it myself :)
To answer my own question: This looks like it is being run on real hardware (with some sort of SD card adapter/loader):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrcZ2-I0CbQ
Cool. But why?
To port advanced new games like Minesweeper and Solitaire to their Gamecube. Freecell is indispensable of course.
How could you forget about Pinball?!?
Hackers got to hack?
While my technical exploits are no where near this - I love reading about people doing odd and difficult things for fun.
(As a young teen who was obsessed with Road Rash on the Sega Game Gear, I wrote down every single save code, after every game I played, along with what I had (bike, level and cash) - after a week or so of doing this I worked out the save code and was able to give myself any level, bike or money by manually tweaking the code. I am sure that I am not the only person that discovered this, but at the time I felt like a god and enjoyed racing the later levels with the worst bikes etc. - sometimes it's just fun to do something because you can.)
See, that's what I actually mean :)
I expanded in a sub-comment: I am not challenging that it was done, I would like to hear about the motivation to do it.
There's no purpose for the result described on Github, and also no background why it was done.
I have no value to run Windows NT on a Gamecube, but I would surely enjoy the story on why it came to be :)
To run Office 4.2 and browse the web in Internet Explorer?
There were native builds of Word and Excel for Alpha that came with 4.2 and 97, but nothing else non-x86 except for the 'pocket' versions that came with Windows CE.
unless.. HTTPS everywhere x D
There are proxies for that.
The page doesn't seem to mention the Gamecube Ethernet card or the Wii's Wi-Fi support, so it might not have any working networking, so that might be a more important issue.
Because they could
And I like that, I'm just literally missing a small intro on the motivation at the GitHub page.
Either way, always nice to read the chain of thought which drove someone to do something- :)