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NetBSD on PS2

Posted by timothy on from the sure-why-not dept.

zmcgrew writes: "Linux has been out for the PS2 for a while, but what about the *BSD users? Well, now NetBSD is availible for the PS2! This means that NetBSD is now availible for 2 gaming consoles, the Dreamcast, and now the PS2. Wonder if the Game Cube and X-Box are in the works? =) I quote from the page, " To boot the kernel, you will require a special boot disc from SONY. The playstation2 can not read CD-Rs. Currently, the only such disc available is the SONY Playstation 2 Linux distribution, sold only in Japanese markets." Well, this leaves a bunch of people out, but maybe someone will figure out how to get the PS2 to boot & read CD-Rs... *Ahem* Maybe a *Co-Weekend project-ugh* for someone? =)" Looks like this port appeared last month -- which means that in a week or so, NetBSD will probably be running on the graphics subsystem alone ;)

32 comments

  1. Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny


    Is NetBSD a game?
    Is it fun?
    Do I shoot things? Or build walls and make the blocks disappear?

    1. Re:Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait
      Do I shoot things?

      No. But I do, punk.

    2. Re:Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heh heh heh.

      I think it's hilarious watching 12-year-olds act tough.

    3. Re:Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, *BSD is a game. You die a lot.

  2. how to boot cd-r's on a playstation 2 by aderusha · · Score: 3, Interesting

    NEO 4

    1. Re:how to boot cd-r's on a playstation 2 by hakker · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The NEO4 is CRAP - DO NOT INSTALL IT. The NEO4 is an irreversable mod to your PS2. During it's installation, not only do you have to make over 60 solder points which are EXTREMELY small, you also have to remove a capacitor and cut etched wires on the board. Furturemore, it has now been proven that it does not work with boards prior to version 4 (that is, if your PS2 is more than say 4 or 5 months old, it won't work). Go with the USB mod if you have to mod your PS2. It is only one solder wire, fairly easy to do, completely reversable, and only requires a little usb box on the outside of the PS2 and a game shark to boot the backups. Works just fine.

    2. Re:how to boot cd-r's on a playstation 2 by faeryman · · Score: 0

      ohh boy those capacitors are a pain!

      i accidently desoldered not only a cap, but its solder pad and trace when installing a neo 1 :( the system would still work but wouldnt load games without making a horrible scratching sound from the cd drive. to make it worse, it was my brothers system so he was pretty sad at what happened.

      we had to send it off to a guy to get it fixed, who accidently broke an IC on the board and had to get a replacement for that. he was supposed to install the NEO and the cap, but a few days ago we get a package in the mail. its the PS2 (fixed thankfully) and the uninstalled modchip, and a money order for $50 (???)

      the only problem is the cd tray is FAST now..like it shakes the system when it opens from popping open so quick.

      but um..yeah..i hate soldering on the PS2 :(

      --


      ,
      faeryman
    3. Re:how to boot cd-r's on a playstation 2 by class_A · · Score: 1

      You're entitled to your opinion, but let me correct a few facts. For a start, it's 44 wires. It works on the majority of boards out there at the moment. The track you have to cut is easy to repair. If you don't want some of the features, ie. DVD multiregion or Macrovision removal, then you can skip the installation of some wires.

      I urge other readers to go and visit the actual homepage of the product Playstationmods and check out the full specification and installation details before posting any criticism. Also, check Digital Forums for reviews and opinions.

      NEO 4 isn't the only mod available either. Channel Technology have produced the Messiah modchip. See their Messiah World forum for more info.

  3. umm by faeryman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The playstation2 can not read CD-Rs

    Yes it can. Maybe it can't boot CD-Rs (I dunno I haven't tried) but I have a mod-chipped Japanese and American model and each will read a CD-R ok. It might need a mod-chip, I dont know if a stock one will read them though.

    The Japanese one needs a blue utility disc to play Cd-Rs along with a modchip. Maybe using those would bypass the need for the Sony disc, since it ejects the utlity disc to swap a Cd-R in, then it could boot a kernel off the swapped disc?

    (man this post makes no sense)

    --


    ,
    faeryman
  4. *BSD got me laid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    It's really true!

    One day I was browsing the personals with my Colecovision ADAM fully loaded with NetBSD. I still use the Colecovision because the 2.75 Mhz processor has all the power that I need. One afternoon, after I finished porting ruby to the PDP-11, I was browsing the personals with lynx.

    I found a hot chick who's only computer was a NeXT cube with that horrible operating system. I went over to her place and put NetBSD on the cube. That got her all hot & bothered, so I put away my cd-case and lubed up all of her serial I/O ports. It was great.

    And talk about stability. While all this was going on, my online store sold $32767 worth of stuff. The colecovision can handle Apache and MySQL with no problems at all, not even a single buffer overflow.

    I am a proud Canadian and a proud *BSD user.

  5. yes but you cant get it in the US. by azephrahel · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I was looking at this awhile ago and the beef I have, we can't use it.
    PS2's can't read burned CD's apparently.
    The linux distro is stamped and sold for use ONLY in Japan afaik.
    And finnaly the NetBSD port isn't really a full port, its just a kernel+bootloader that could be used, if it were stamped.
    Did I get this all right?
    It was one thing when NetBSD came out with support for AMD's X86-64bit, because there were emulators developers were supposed to use to get ready. So there was something to run it on.
    This on the other hand...well, you just can't run it yet. :(
    When I saw the headline, I thought, ohh wow,
    • now
    we can actually see it boot, but no.
    Its pretty agrivating a ps2 can't read burned disks :/
    --
    You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
    1. Re:yes but you cant get it in the US. by augustss · · Score: 1

      > This on the other hand...well, you just can't run it yet. :(

      Depends on who "you" are. People in Japan can run it.
      But the fact that it's not generally available is one reason that we (= NetBSD people) have not really promoted this port.

    2. Re:yes but you cant get it in the US. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



      The NetBSD people? As in your one of the users or devleopers?
      If its users then I'm a netbsd poeple! NetBSD Pmax and NetBSD hpcips ;)

    3. Re:yes but you cant get it in the US. by andrewscraig · · Score: 1

      The PS2 can read Burned CD's - at least the European model can. I don't know about booting from them or anything, but it can definately read CD-R audio discs - plays them without any problems.

  6. *BSD is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Netcraft Confirms: *BSD is dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confrmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in th recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dead

    1. Re:*BSD is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fact: You are dead

    2. Re:*BSD is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How gay is this guy!? Certainly no life.. Oh, BTW, check NetCraft, they run FreeBSD...

    3. Re:*BSD is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      freebsd wont die, it will continue, do you know why? because it is better than most linuxes. dont get me wrong here, i do use and like linux. its just that a lot of tests put freebsd above linux, in most areas anyway.

  7. PS2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Am I the only one who thought of IBM PS/2 computers when I first say this article?

    1. Re:PS2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I am a sad computer nerd too!

    2. Re:PS2? by scott4000 · · Score: 1

      ah, my trusty old IBM PS/2...yes, I thought of the IBM PS/2.

    3. Re:PS2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you already forgotten? the mca port was last week, looks like it must be netbsd ps2 month :o)

    4. Re:PS2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A dying OS on a dead PC. Sounds good to me.

  8. Not on Game Cube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Unless you have the ability to make baby disc, I doubt that you'll see a port for the Game Cube.

    1. Re:Not on Game Cube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Check this out, and say it is not possible :) Mini CD

    2. Re:Not on Game Cube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or even better Mini DVD-R

    3. Re:Not on Game Cube by faeryman · · Score: 0

      from what my brother tells me, people in Hong Kong have already started copying/pirating gamecube games.

      i have a stack of mini-cdrs, and there exists mini-dvdr's, so i think it wont be long until you can order pirated gamecube games.

      goes for any system actually. i remember when the dreamcast could be copied by echelon but not publically, now you can have software that rips gdroms via the BBA into windows. and this was on an unpiratable system.

      the gamecube uses a powerpc processor, so porting NetBSD to it is only a matter of time.

      --


      ,
      faeryman
  9. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    you know the story

  10. Hummm... Apple doesn't think so... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just think of all those Mac's (One every five minutes) rolling off the assembly line with Mac OS X (BSD based). You can write off the market share for every other UNIX like OS as they will be marginalized.

    Oh well...

  11. More than I thought! by littlebilly · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ok first I thought this was cool. After reading some of the posts here and elswhere I figured that it was pretty limited. I checked out www.ps2linux.com a site mostly in japanese. It appears that a PS2 linux kit is available that contains
    10/100 baseT ethernet adapter
    A Hard Drive (couldn't determine size)
    USB keyboard
    USB Mouse 2 button + Scoll wheel button
    A cord that as far as I can tell will attach a monitor
    PS2 linux Beta Release 1 DVD DISK
    - PlayStartion 2 Runtime Enviroment
    PS2 Linux Beta Release 1 install kit
    Linux 2.2.1 + 2.2.18
    XFree86 3.3.6
    gcc 2.95.2
    Mesa Graphics Synthesizer
    Playstation 2 ( cant determine what this software is)

    check out this screenshot
    http://www.ps2linux.com/images/pv/screenshot.jpg
    It shows someone running gimp,and compiling somthing in kterm

    I wonder what performance is like? A large swap on the hard drive is probably needed.
    IF this becomes available in US I will pick it up.

    1. Re:More than I thought! by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 1

      The hard disk is 40GB, and the cable is a VGA cable, that has L and R RCA plugs for audio.

      I will be getting it when it comes to the US.

  12. NetBSD runs on a lot of machines by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 1

    But is it any good on an i386/586?

    --
    Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.