Windows NT ported to Wii

[ChibiMofo]

This is pretty cool but I have to ask why? lol. NT is old and it wasn't a very good OS.

LOL! Windows NT was STATE OF THE ART when it released. It was also FAR better and more stable than Windows 3.1, Win95, Win98, Win98SE, or Win ME, obviously. It is what Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11 are based on. Learn a little before commenting on a subject you know nothing about.

The reason you do something like this (or putting shitty Linux on everything) is not because it is useful, but because it is cool. If you don't get this, don't pay attention to announcements like this.

For you gamers: Very few DOS games from that era would run correctly on the PPC version of Windows NT. Windows games and CDROMs might, but obviously MSFT didn't make this OS for gamerboys. Don't expect this to open floodgates to DOS games on Wii. There are a thousand better ways to play those games anyway. Frankly the most exciting thing you could do with this is run Microsoft Office 4.2 for PPC (which was a thing, by the way). Yeah, not too exciting, but oh so 1995!

 

[lwiz]

LOL! Windows NT was STATE OF THE ART when it released. It was also FAR better and more stable than Windows 3.1, Win95, Win98, Win98SE, or Win ME, obviously. It is what Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11 are based on. Learn a little before commenting on a subject you know nothing about.

Yeah, you had to be there in that timeframe in order to appreciate what NT 4 was.

Suddenly in the video editing front you had an alternative on Macintoshes. For far cheaper price point you could get a video editing station capable on running multiple processors, for fraction of price of Mac with robust OS and filesystem. And as rendering the effects was pricey due time requirements, couple of PIII's could run circles around PowerPC's when time was the essence. Amigas were sadly thing in the past limited by hardware on doing very simple keying on VHS grade material really.

Also, 3DS Max on NT, although somewhat limited back then gained momentum and started to take over SGI workstations, Softimage, Alias etc. (R.I.P.) Again, the price of workstation compared to render speed and the time needed for modeling etc. made huge leaps in that time.

Of course not much of this matters with NT 4.0 on PowerPC (although I have somewhat fuzzy memory on some 3D modelers/renderers running on that as well, but at that time it was giant leap towards affordability and speed compared to competition, ultimately leading to SGI's demise.

 

[Krafter]

LOL! Windows NT was STATE OF THE ART when it released. It was also FAR better and more stable than Windows 3.1, Win95, Win98, Win98SE, or Win ME, obviously. It is what Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11 are based on. Learn a little before commenting on a subject you know nothing about.

The reason you do something like this (or putting shitty Linux on everything) is not because it is useful, but because it is cool. If you don't get this, don't pay attention to announcements like this.

For you gamers: Very few DOS games from that era would run correctly on the PPC version of Windows NT. Windows games and CDROMs might, but obviously MSFT didn't make this OS for gamerboys. Don't expect this to open floodgates to DOS games on Wii. There are a thousand better ways to play those games anyway. Frankly the most exciting thing you could do with this is run Microsoft Office 4.2 for PPC (which was a thing, by the way). Yeah, not too exciting, but oh so 1995!

I literately said "This is pretty cool" which is the reason you said it was done. So..... Not sure what the issue is lol. I honestly think it is pretty cool and far beyond my skill set so my hat is off to the person that was able to pull it off. Useful, no. Very cool, yes.

 

[tech3475]

I'd be interested to hear one of the MS Devs thoughts on these unofficial ports, especially now it's on the Wii.

 

[NiQ1]

Did you read the post!?
Also, that game is apparently available on Steam and will probably run under modern Windows without too much difficulty.

Actually, there's a 3rd party tool called "Soft Windows 32", that allows running 32-bit x86 apps, though compatibility isn't perfect.

It will not let you run most Windows 9x games though. The reason is that the last service pack released on PPC was SP2 - and SP3 (released only for x86 and Alpha) was the one that introduced DirectX 3. On the Wii, you'd be stuck with DirectX 2, and hardly any games support it.

 

[Disorarara]

Actually, there's a 3rd party tool called "Soft Windows 32", that allows running 32-bit x86 apps, though compatibility isn't perfect.

It will not let you run most Windows 9x games though. The reason is that the last service pack released on PPC was SP2 - and SP3 (released only for x86 and Alpha) was the one that introduced DirectX 3. On the Wii, you'd be stuck with DirectX 2, and hardly any games support it.

It's been updated now to add more video modes plus DX5 has been patched to run on the Wii:

https://github.com/Wack0/entii-for-workcubes/releases

Someone should try and see how far they can get with running Win32 games, apparently Age of Empires is supposed to work, and I saw someone else on Reddit playing Sim City 2000.

 

[Subnetic]

It's been updated now to add more video modes plus DX5 has been patched to run on the Wii:

https://github.com/Wack0/entii-for-workcubes/releases

Someone should try and see how far they can get with running Win32 games, apparently Age of Empires is supposed to work, and I saw someone else on Reddit playing Sim City 2000.

I've gotten decently far with Win 3.11 but so far the Wii doesn't agree with any of the 256-color graphics drivers available for 3.11 that I've tried(required for many games of that era) and the DosBox revision we are using to encapsulate 3.11 for the Wii is fairly outdated. I'm not exactly sure what the problem is and I'm not the most experienced but its been a lot of fun to mess around with and my next attempts will probably be using the project by Wack0 with NT 4.0, if I have any luck I'll post an update - some of the games I'm looking to try are compiled for WIn 3.X/NT/95

 

[Disorarara]

I've gotten decently far with Win 3.11 but so far the Wii doesn't agree with any of the 256-color graphics drivers available for 3.11 that I've tried(required for many games of that era) and the DosBox revision we are using to encapsulate 3.11 for the Wii is fairly outdated. I'm not exactly sure what the problem is and I'm not the most experienced but its been a lot of fun to mess around with and my next attempts will probably be using the project by Wack0 with NT 4.0, if I have any luck I'll post an update - some of the games I'm looking to try are compiled for WIn 3.X/NT/95

DOSBox Wii has been updated to add a dynarec recompiler and is actually able to play games like Fallout 1 and Dark Forces, so you might have more luck with trying x86 Windows emulation on that version. The native Windows NT Wii port runs an order of magnitude faster than DOSBox emulation and doesn't have to emulate as much as DOSBox does so you'll definitely have more success with it trying to run Win32 games, a lot of people have been able to run PC games with varying degrees of success.

 

[Disorarara]

https://github.com/Wack0/entii-for-workcubes/releases/tag/v20250329

Another update! This time Direct3D 7!! it can now potentially run even *more* and newer games!

 

[niuus]

https://github.com/Wack0/entii-for-workcubes/releases/tag/v20250329

Another update! This time Direct3D 7!! it can now potentially run even *more* and newer games!

Wow. Wasn't expecting this to advance higher than DirectX 2.

 

[Kwyjor]

Another update! This time Direct3D 7!! it can now potentially run even *more* and newer games!

How'd they do that..? I think DX5 support was provided in an unreleased beta service pack for NT 4.0, but not DX7.

Does that mean people have been using DX7 in native NT 4.0 as well?

 

[Jubadub]

• Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 for PowerPC - Install this if you're crazy enough to write your own apps or port open source software to Windows NT for the Wii.

Someone called?

See this post over at MacRumors PPC for brand-new native PowerPC Windows NT SP2 software, "WBTD.exe", compiled on and run from a real Nintendo Wii. Source included. It's attached to the comment, which could perhaps mean registering and logging in is required to download it, but I'm not sure. Try it out? Registration is free and non-intrusive anyway.

If you scroll up a bit on that thread, you will also see mention of a more up-to-date compiler for WinNT PPC, namely the same compiler, but version 4.1 instead (AKA version 4.0a).

By the way, it really wasn't hard to code for this at all: I actually used Visual Studio 2022 on a Windows 7 SP1 machine, then copied my C file over to the Wii, and then tried to compile that over there instead. The result? It worked without me having to do any code modifications, and without me having any familiarity with Visual C++ whatsoever. Even my C knowledge is super tiny and limited. If I can develop for this thing, ANYONE here reading this can! I really do mean that.

You will not be able to get Windows 95 games running on it.

Overall it's great for science and a huge feat for the developer just getting it to boot. Is it usable for anything? Probably not. But it's cool!

Actually, we can. And later. Especially with some of the later versions of DirectX components that Rairii ported or brought over since. I ran Nihon Falcom's "Vantage Master Online" (English version of "Vantage Master V2") myself, thanks to it, as well as thanks to Motorola SoftWindows (wx86, linked in the thread, possibly would also have worked). Worked perfectly. If only we had sound drivers already, though!

Is it usable for anything? Probably not. But it's cool!

Actually, it is: all modern CPUs have firmware-level backdoors, but all PowerPC CPUs are exempt from those (POWER9 aside), which is what the Wii, Wii U, GameCube and PowerMacs all sport (and PS3 and Xbox 360, although only 64-bit). So if networking was available, there would be higher privacy potential in having your Windows PC be your Wii or similar. WinNT 4.0 SP2 itself was also nowhere near as backdoored as later versions of Windows (if backdoored at all, but it might be, e.g. NSA key being present, as it was since later versions of Win95 onwards), so there's also some potential in that, as well.

Of course, I'd never recommend net banking on it due to exploits possible in such an old system, but then again, nothing beats in-person banking regardless of device or OS anyway. But for everything else? Go nuts!

If only we could also run Mac OS 9.2.2 and earlier on the Wii natively next! That'd be even more epic!

Anyway, all modern and even many oldschool ARM, Intel and AMD processors are all backdoored, on the other hand (Intel ME, AMD PSP etc.), and many even have undocumented CPU instructions to elevate access to root or equivalent. So having a PPC CPU for a personal system or device is one of multiple steps for taking computing into the right direction with regards to basic privacy, unlike cellphones, modern PCs and modern gaming devices (I'm looking at you, Switch 1/2, 3DS, Vita, PS4+, XBone+).

In other words, the Wii rocks, PowerPC rocks, and THIS rocks! Enjoy!

 

[JORGETECH]

If only we could also run Mac OS 9.2.2 and earlier on the Wii natively next! That'd be even more epic!

Ok, so I'm not an expert in how Classic PowerPC Mac stuff works in a deep level, but I've dealt with Classic Mac emulators for so long and played around with an old PowerMac enough that I can guess what would be necessary.

First of all, the first component of the boot process, OpenFirmware, would need to be ported to the Wii. As far as I'm aware, there is some source code available around the net for what I guess is a sample implementation, but some "real world" source code for a Mac would be helpful of course, so someone is able to figure out how the hardware components of the Wii need to be initialized. Maybe some useful information could be extracted from existing emulators (QEMU, Sheepshaver, PearPC, DingusPPC).

Of course, drivers need to be written for Mac OS 9 so it can use the hardware. I guess the most complicated part would be the graphics driver. Since the Wii has a graphics solution from ATi (now AMD) it may be a good idea to look into existing ATi drivers for Classic Macintosh. As far as I'm aware, ATi GPUs were the most popular option for Macs back in the day, Apple shipped ATi GPUs from the factory in a bunch of their models (for example, the PowerMac G4 shipped with an ATi Rage 128 Pro). However, the GX GPU found inside the GameCube and the Wii uses a newer architecture than the older Rage GPUs, if TechPowerUp is to be believed the Wii GPU seems to be based on the "Ultra-Threaded SE" architecture (take that with a grain of salt), so we are talking about Radeon X1300 to X1900. Now, it seems like the last Radeon GPU supported in Classic MacOS is the 9200 which uses the older Rage 7 architecture. Maybe some basic 2D stuff would be easier to implement in software but 3D hardware acceleration would be tricky to say the least.

Another (potentially easier) path could be to port an existing PowerPC Mac emulator and swap some code so the CPU instructions are natively executed, but of course, that would no longer be native execution like the NT port is, and we already have Mac-on-Linux running on the Wii so it's less exciting.

Of course, this is talking from my existing knowledge, so if anything that I said is wrong I would like to be corrected.