If you’ve ever wondered whether those dodgy card readers in Melbourne are capable of doing something greater, yes: they can run DOOM.
One cheeky Melbournian managed to take a Myki card reader home with them – how I have no idea – and decided to answer the age old question. Given that Myki card readers are all run off Windows CE, it meant that running DOOM was possible. Using Chocolate DOOM, redditor zbios installed the id classic onto the myki reader via the terminal’s flash port (as there’s no USB ports to plug into).
“Since there Is a Windows CE version of Chocolate Doom (Doom source port), I was able to simply extract the CAB file, rename the conents and copy it directly to the machine via its compact flash port. I am controlling the game via VNC since there are no USB ports on the validator,” zbios wrote, adding that “I will say that I did not steal” the myki reader.
The game runs relatively smoothly, and there’s no noticeable lag with the mouse and keyboard inputs. “If you view it via the VNC video output it would be around 500ms latency,” they warned.
It reminds me of the time when a 19-year-old picked up an old McDonalds cash register, and got DOOM running on one of those. “I was able to run explorer.exe by doing CTRL ALT DEL to get to Task Manager but there was some weird encryption on it,” they told Kotaku Australia at the time.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/10/a-19-year-old-got-doom-running-on-a-mcdonalds-cash-register/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/10/doom-maccas-register-1-410×231.jpg” title=”A 19-Year-Old Got DOOM Running On A McDonalds Cash Register” excerpt=”You think your gaming rig is impressive? Not anymore. Meet Ryan Edgar, a 19-year-old who has the wonderful honour of playing DOOM … on a Maccas register.”]
Now, what other public terminals can we get DOOM running on? Opal card readers? Airport kiosk terminals? It worked on a homebrew DSi. Hell, even North Korea’s weird fork of Red Hat can run DOOM these days.
Leave a Reply