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A More In Depth Look at PS/2 Linux
An anonymous reader writes "I have yet to see a GOOD review of the Linux (for Playstation 2) kit... until now... "
The article takes awhile to get to the point, but covers a lot of information
about what you can and can't do w/ the kit, and more interestingly what
the author thinks the kit is intended to accomplish.
PS/2 is that IBM computer from back in the day
PS2 is the correct abbreviation for playstation 2
"Next was the USB Keyboard. This was packaged in a yellow cardboard box. Upon opening it, it appears as a standard black keyboard, but on closer inspection you find that the Windows keys are missing."
Let us not forget that all things Windows are PROPRIETARY!! MS Keys have nothing to do with a "standard" keyboard!! I'd hoped that a 27 year old guy who is installing Linux on his PS2 would have known that!!
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
If anyone is interested, the source code for PS2 BASIC is here.
It's a standard Linux distribution - you can treat it as a (slow, 300MHz) MIPS machine if you want. You get gcc/g++ and everything else you might find in a modern(ish) distribution.
:-)
:-)
The gcc port understands the VU assember syntax, so you can embed asm() blocks and have the code for the VU run on the VU via the direct link, and code for the mips chip run there.
It also comes with vcl. This is a godsend - it takes your crap linear vector-unit assembly code and parellelises it onto the vector units as best it can, re-ordering etc. to get the most out of the units.
There are a couple of rather nice libraries (ps2stuff, ps2gl) which provide base-level things (ps2stuff) and an openGL-like layer (ps2gl). To the extent that I could prove a bug in ps2gl by taking the same source code and compiling on my (i386) linux pc with 'g++ stars.cpp -o stars -L/usr/X11R6/lib -LGL -lglut'. Fantastic
Ps2gl allows you to code renderers in VU assembly, and associate a new primitive type that can be placed in the DMA stream, which will call your new rendered automatically. There's an example of this shipped with the kit.
The only fly in the ointment is that the gcc shipped is only 32-bit, which means all the 128-bit registers get stomped on if they're passed as function arguments. There is apparently a patch in SCEE that will help this, although it'll lead to static binaries until everything is compiled with it (I don't care!). This will finally allow the VU's to do all the matrix and quaternion algebra they're really good at, and the system will fly
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Thanks to this article, I've noticed that the kit is now available for order in europe. w00t! I'll be doing some serious PS2 coding soon :)
True warriors use the Klingon Google
That's $200 for the ps2 kit, plus PS2 ($200), $30 for a new memory card, Monitor w/ sync on green ($300/400?), or a TV. Not that cheap huh? My friend has one - its a really cool idea but it's not a machine that you could use for day to day tasks - Mozilla won't run properly due to the lack of memory (so you're stuck with konquerer), font rendering is a bit naff, and it's really slow... (compiling large apps is a bitch, takes about a day(!!) to compile mozilla) Also, as the article mentions you have NO control over the IO chip, which really really limits what you can do with the machine. However, I'd get one to use as an mp3/mame box in my living room, connect it to the sound system and network and write a nice front end shell to use mame/play mp3s, that would be usefull :P
-gaff2k
Sony makes a lot of their money off of disk licensing fees.
Correction, they make all of their money off licensing fees. The consoles are sold at a loss.
The article is extremely accurate as to the packaging. I had expected a small box with a CD and a drive... but it was a large box that was well-crammed with packages. Sorta like xmas.
Like the author, of all the monitors I had none that were sync-on-green (www.playstation2-linux.com has a compatible monitor database so you can check before you try to see if you have a proper monitor). Like the author, I did the blind install (instructions also available at the above URL).
The blind install worked flawlessly for me and took about an hour (45 minutes of which it simply rattled away on it's own doing the install).
So... what do I do with it? Well, I have a number of uses. First... it is a wonderfully inexpensive full *NIX workstation. Because I am in Hawaii and my servers are in the mainland, I use computers in my house to monitor my remote servers on a full-time basis... the PS2 allows me to check my servers from the living room (instead of having to go up to the office constantly). Towards this end, I am designing 3D remote monitor software (that will monitor servers and display load, disk space, users, mail, dns health, etc... in a nice 3D graphical environment).
We also run the game 'tranquility' (www.TQworld.com), and are looking at rewriting it for the PS2 under Linux (I don't know if there is a market yet for Linux based PS2 games, but we'll give it a shot anyway).
The bottom line? Very very very impressive packaging. Good attention to detail - but yes, it's a geek thing because you have to be innovative and a digger to find all the info you want.
A very nice design... and also... price-wise pretty good. I can certainly envision a rack of PS2's humming along. According to the www.playstation2-linux.com website, a number of people have had them up and running as web servers for quite some time... and report great stability.
I have seen only one problem so far. When I ssh to remote servers and run 'top' for 5 days straight, upon stopping the remote connection and trying to do something else I have now twice seen ethernet errors of *no more space* (no more space on ethernet???? what gives with that)... so there are some caveats - but all in all, very very impressive.
The author, however, is 100% correct when he says it will be 6 months learning to fully understand/use the device. The manuals are complex and somewhat confusing (even though I have 25+ years of assembly and graphics coding on SGI etc..) it WILL take a while to understand and experiment with.
The only thing I need now is a MUCH longer keyboard cable so I can program from the sofa ;))
Aloha Nui Loa