FreeBSD Running On PS3

An anonymous reader writes "One week after Sony's PlayStation 3 private cryptography key was obtained, FreeBSD is up and running on the PS3. Nathan Whitehorn writes: 'Yesterday, I imported support for the Sony Playstation 3 into our 64-bit PowerPC port, expanding our game console support into the current generation. There are still a few rough edges due to missing hardware support, but the machine boots and runs FreeBSD stably. These rough edges should be smoothed out in time for the 9.0 release.'" Update: 01/10 15:04 GMT by KD : As several commenters have pointed out, the submission was misleading in that BSD runs in OtherOS, making no use of the cracked keys.

Comments

Firmware 3.21

[project-nova]

From TFA:

Supported hardware:
- Sony Playstation 3 Fat, firmware version 3.21
- Netbooting only
- 480i/480p only

!News

They had me at "Free"

[Fibe-Piper]

...wait, I have to buy a PS3?

Running in OtherOS, not natively

[ard]

There is no relation to the cracked keys, as it runs in the OtherOS mode. I.e. instead of Linux, you can run FreeBSD in OtherOS.

*NOT* related to the recent crypto break

[fgrieu]

This is *NOT* related to the recent crypto break, as demonstrated by the release note stating

Supported hardware:Sony Playstation 3 Fat, firmware version 3.21

Francois Grieu

Cool - no hardware hack required

[Algorithmnast]

I was worried at first that I'd have to burn a chip or something equally prone to destroying an expensive toy... but after I actually researched it... here, I find that you don't have to mod the PS3 at all - you just have to create a disk that looks like a game disk to the PS3.

And if you want to go back to PS3 behavior, you just reset the PS3 box.

Now that is a cool hack.

Re:I only have one word to say about this

[hairyfeet]

Well to be fair the Linux guy would want to "spice up" your drink with all these 'free" ingredients that were made for a dozen different drinks that didn't go together, so what you ended up with smelled suspiciously like RMS's feet and tasted just as bad. The Windows guy would just pour you some stale shit from a can while swearing it is completely fresh and flavorful, while the Apple guy would offer you an "iSmoothy" that cost three times what it was worth and when you told him you didn't like Pineapple he would say "Liar! Everyone LOVES Pineapple! You just aren't cultured enough to appreciate the experience!"

So I guess the moral of the story is to pour your own drinks and OS guys typically have bad taste in booze.