[ale] Linux on Game Consoles--the answer!

[Keith Hopkins]

> On Sun, 2002-12-01 at 00:55, Ken Arromdee wrote:
>>For Playstation 2 Linux, go to http://playstation2-linux.com/.  You need a
>>kit from Sony to use it.  The kit has a hard drive with it, in a proprietary
>>format.  You can only access the hardware through Sony's runtime environment,
>>which won't let you read regular CDs or DVDs.  (An artificial limitation
>>imposed by Sony.)
> 
Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> I've looked at that site (and the DVD play capability leans me to the
> PS2 as I have no player now) but what I'm not seeing is a basic
> description of the current status of the project, i.e., what can one now
> do?
> 

A friend who does "Windows" has a PS2, and I helped him set up Linux on it about 4 months ago.  He's using it as a web/ftp/ssh server.

The kit from Sony is RH 6.x based and comes with the 2.2 kernel.  Patches available on the playstation2-linux.com site will bring it up to 2.2.20 functionality.  The work on porting the 2.4 kernel is still "work in progress" last time I looked.

Any extras or updates need to be loaded from the site (and there are not that many updates posted), or you compile it yourself.  Keep in mind the ps2 only has 32M of RAM, so that puts a cap on a lot of graphical programs you can run (no Mozilla for now).

Eric Web wrote:
> Curious question:  How different are the network adapter module and the module 
> that comes with the linux kit?  By the pictures, I can see that one has a 
> modem and the other doesn't, but I'm being told that both have a hard disk 
> interface (presumably IDE).  Any truth to this?

That's a ethernet port on the Japan domestic version of the Linux kit.  The US version has a separate card for Ethernet (don't know anything about the US ethernet card or it's modem port).
The Linux kit version has an port for IDE (firewire I think, but it could be USB or proprietary), and the Linux kit comes with a external IDE drive with it's matching black case.

-- 
Lost in Tokyo,
   Keith


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