Codingstyle Interviews PS2 Linux Developers

Linux Freak writes "May 22 marks the official release of Sony's PS2 Linux kit in North America and Europe! To give you something to do while waiting for your package to arrive in the mail, Codingstyle has conducted an interview with several people in the PS2 development community, including two people from Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (SCEA) and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Ltd. (SCEE), as well as official kit and PS2DEV hobbyists."

Comments

Re:not to be an asshole but...

[inkfox]

Could someone explain the point of this exersise, except for the hack value.

I make video games for a living. I'm a lead programmer, and I make hiring decisions.

If you wrote a decent PS2 Linux game on your own, I'd hire you in a heartbeat, even if you had no industry experience.

How's that?

The most important bit of information....

[Cryptnotic]

...on that page actually wasn't part of the article. It was a comment by "mrbrown".

One of the most surprising features about the kit is how the Linux kernel is loaded into RAM and executed: the kernel ELF file (a common executable format that's also used on the PS2) is stored to the memory card, and the PS2/Linux bootloader loads it into RAM and executes it. However Sony allows you to place _any_ ELF executable on the memory card to be loaded. This means that any native PS2 program, even those written by PS2DEV enthusiasts, can be loaded without a swap trick or modchip. This is how the NetBSD and eCos teams were able to port their respective operating systems to the PS2.

Because of this, the number of uses for the kit are actually limitless as long as the boot CD doesn't put the PS2 into some "limited" mode. But that doesn't seem to be the case.