Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

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Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby ppietro » 24 Jun 2009, 07:33

(This is primarily directed at PS3 Linux users - but others might find this interesting)

Hi everyone,

Well - it looks like one of PS3 Linux's ancestors is finally calling it a day. Sony is shutting down the PS2 Linux site: http://playstation2-linux.com/forum/for ... um_id=1251

I'm fairly sad to see this go. I contributed many, many PS2 builds of Mozilla, Firefox & Thunderbird to this site. In fact, I attended the Mozilla 1.0 release celebrations, based on my membership there. See here: http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/mozilla-ps2

I learned much about the ways of the Sony from this site. In some ways, what we do with PS3 Linux is based on lessons learned (or unlearned) from PS2 Linux. Much like Yellow Dog Linux, PS2 Linux was also derived from Red Hat Linux, via Kondara Linux. It allowed full access to the PS2's Emotion Engine - including the twin Vector Unit processors. Only the cryptography functions were restricted so that you couldn't copy PS2 games directly.

That website was also the place I originally met CronoCloud. He was trying to compile the PS2 version of Firefox with gtk2 and freetype. Good times. :)

It's worth poking around the site a little bit before they shut it down for good. There's a lot of knowledge locked up in there.

Cheers,
Paul

P.S. For those of you who have never seen the PS2 Linux kit - it was quite impressive. It came with a keyboard, mouse, special network adaptor, hard drive, special VGA cable and two DVDs of source code & binary code. Here's the bundle:
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby CronoCloud » 25 Jun 2009, 07:49

ppietro wrote:Well - it looks like one of PS3 Linux's ancestors is finally calling it a day. Sony is shutting down the PS2 Linux site: http://playstation2-linux.com/forum/for ... um_id=1251


Sniffle. But I expected to happen sooner than it did.

I'm fairly sad to see this go. I contributed many, many PS2 builds of Mozilla, Firefox & Thunderbird to this site.


Many indeed.

In fact, I attended the Mozilla 1.0 release celebrations, based on my membership there.


Cool.

In some ways, what we do with PS3 Linux is based on lessons learned (or unlearned) from PS2 Linux.


Oh yeah.

That website was also the place I originally met CronoCloud. He was trying to compile the PS2 version of Firefox with gtk2 and freetype. Good times. :)


Yep, that freetype2 support helped a lot with legibility on my NTSC screen. I also had all sorts of crazy features compiled in, SVG support for one, since I had the necessary libs. Of course, as I've said before, it took for-e-ver to compile so I only did it once and settled on using your builds.

It's worth poking around the site a little bit before they shut it down for good. There's a lot of knowledge locked up in there.


Some of it's applicabble to YDL too.

P.S. For those of you who have never seen the PS2 Linux kit - it was quite impressive. It came with a keyboard, mouse, special network adaptor, hard drive, special VGA cable and two DVDs of source code & binary code.


And most of it comes in ready-for-retail boxes. They never did release that keyboard and mouse to the stores. So sad, because that keyboard is one of the best keyboards I have ever used. It died, eventually. Same goes for the mouse, best non-optical mouse I ever used, very comfy.

I have the kit's HD right in my hand. SCPH-20401 Mfg Date 29JAN2002 War.End: APR05.
It lasted till July of last year till boot sector problems took it down. I can still read from it with my USB to ATA thingie, it just won't boot.

Ron Rogers Jr. (CronoCloud)
CECHE01 PS3 (MGS4 80GB Bundle) without OtherOS and with an upgraded 320GB HD
Running Fedora 23 on a Compaq Presario CQ5320F upgraded with a Phenom X4 and GT640
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby Taellik » 25 Aug 2009, 01:11

Anything from the downloads or forums info you'd recommend getting a copy of before it goes <poof> ?

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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby ppietro » 25 Aug 2009, 01:34

Taellik wrote:Anything from the downloads or forums info you'd recommend getting a copy of before it goes <poof> ?


Unless you have a PS2 Linux kit, no.

The PS2 processor, like the Cell, is a hybrid design. Unlike the Cell, the center core is MIPS, not PowerPC. So - the binaries won't run.

For grins I did try to see if I could run PS2 Linux on my hardware-based BC PS3. It was, alas, a "no go". :D

Cheers,
Paul
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby ppietro » 25 Aug 2009, 02:54

I was thinking about this some more.

You might find a couple of my HOWTO's interesting:

This is a guide to cross-compiling Mozilla:
http://playstation2-linux.com/download/ ... 1.0.1.html

This is how I got the Sony Broadband Navigator kernel running on PS2 Linux:
http://playstation2-linux.com/download/ ... howto.html

Good times.

Cheers,
Paul
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby Taellik » 25 Aug 2009, 12:56

Paul,

I got to surf thru the forums, saw yours and Chronocloud's posting about doing up stuff and such.

You still have your PS2 / Linux setup or is it in a shoebox in the back of your closet?

Did you like having it - or was too difficult to work with and junked it when the PS3 / YDL combo became available ?

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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby ppietro » 25 Aug 2009, 16:46

Taellik wrote:Paul,

I got to surf thru the forums, saw yours and Chronocloud's posting about doing up stuff and such.

You still have your PS2 / Linux setup or is it in a shoebox in the back of your closet?

Did you like having it - or was too difficult to work with and junked it when the PS3 / YDL combo became available ?

Taellik


Oh - it's still running. In fact - it runs 24/7 - it's my main webserver. :D

I keep the keyboard and mouse safely tucked away - since it's on the net, I use SSH and Remote X Windows to control it.

I haven't done much with it lately, to be honest. The odd Firefox build now and again.

If you think the 256 Megs of RAM is bad - try 32. That really limits your ambitions. :D

Also - it's not quite a standard Linux. There's some custom Sony bits that sometimes make programming it tricky. We never did quite get more modern kernels running on it - which also limits it.

This is why - for all of its faults - I like the PS3 hypervisor approach. Rather than make a non-standard Linux - like PS2 Linux - it abstracts away the weirdness, letting you get on with what you want to do.

Cheers,
Paul
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby Taellik » 25 Aug 2009, 17:48

Oh - it's still running. In fact - it runs 24/7 - it's my main webserver. :D


No way !! :shock:

You have Apache web server running on it ? Did that come on the original disk ?


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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby ppietro » 25 Aug 2009, 19:02

Taellik wrote:
Oh - it's still running. In fact - it runs 24/7 - it's my main webserver. :D


No way !! :shock:

You have Apache web server running on it ? Did that come on the original disk ?


Taellik


Oh yeah - it's a full Red Hat 6.2-ish distro. We've updated some of the Libraries since then - but you know Linux - it mostly just keeps working.

The nice thing about PS2 Linux is that you get to use the full 40 gigs of the HDD. Unlike the PS3, you have to format your PS2 HDD for either PS2 software or Linux - it normally doesn't share the drive. (There were work-arounds for this - but they were a little on the "tricky" side. :D)

You can try browsing to it if you like:
http://www.weasel-bot.com/boa/

This is a gallery I made of a band I travelled to England to see. They're called Boa - if you're an anime fan, you might have heard their song "Duvet" in Serial Experiments: Lain. That's me in photos 8 & 9. And - yes - it was a long time ago. It must have been around 2001 or so.

You can hear the song Duvet here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWuq-Gvw ... r_embedded

Cheers,
Paul
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby Taellik » 25 Aug 2009, 19:57

Not too shabby load time for the images. . . . :D

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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby CronoCloud » 26 Aug 2009, 04:51

Taellik wrote:Anything from the downloads or forums info you'd recommend getting a copy of before it goes <poof> ?

Taellik


Everything you can get your hands on, that is if you have a PS2 LInux kit.

Ron Rogers Jr. (CronoCloud)
CECHE01 PS3 (MGS4 80GB Bundle) without OtherOS and with an upgraded 320GB HD
Running Fedora 23 on a Compaq Presario CQ5320F upgraded with a Phenom X4 and GT640
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby CronoCloud » 26 Aug 2009, 04:53

ppietro wrote:For grins I did try to see if I could run PS2 Linux on my hardware-based BC PS3. It was, alas, a "no go". :D

Cheers,
Paul


The PS2 LInux kit's RTE disc was one of the first PS2 discs I tried it on my CECHE01 with the part software BC, didn't work.

Ron Rogers Jr. (CronoCloud)
CECHE01 PS3 (MGS4 80GB Bundle) without OtherOS and with an upgraded 320GB HD
Running Fedora 23 on a Compaq Presario CQ5320F upgraded with a Phenom X4 and GT640
Vizio E221A1 22" 1080P TV with HDMI, using 1080P over HDMI
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby CronoCloud » 26 Aug 2009, 05:01

Taellik wrote:
You still have your PS2 / Linux setup or is it in a shoebox in the back of your closet?


The PS2 Linux kit's HD that used to sit in midgar (my first PS2) has boot sector errors, won't boot, but it's sitting within a foot or so of me in a cubbyhole on my desk. I have another PS2 (Junon) that has Linux installed on it, but it won't boot because of DRE problems. The RTE disc is the only NTSC/UC PS2 disc pressed in Japan, and it's wonky. If you have it, it's an easy way to check for future DRE's since they'll show up with it first before you'll see it with any game. I also have a PS2 HD in nibelheim (yet another PS2) that CAN boot the RTE disc and in fact it's my only PS2 that can. but it has a standard FFXI HD in it with some other HD data on it, SOCOM and whatnot. There's a few PS2 games that don't work well on a PS3, I keep it around for that, but it's power switch on the rear is off and gets little use.

Did you like having it - or was too difficult to work with and junked it when the PS3 / YDL combo became available ?

Taellik


I loved it, used it as my desktop for 6 years. Wasn't that difficult to work with at all, at least once you learn how. I have my YDL environment set up almost exactly the same as Linux on the PS2.

Ron Rogers Jr. (CronoCloud)
CECHE01 PS3 (MGS4 80GB Bundle) without OtherOS and with an upgraded 320GB HD
Running Fedora 23 on a Compaq Presario CQ5320F upgraded with a Phenom X4 and GT640
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby CronoCloud » 26 Aug 2009, 05:16

ppietro wrote:Oh - it's still running. In fact - it runs 24/7 - it's my main webserver. :D


Which model is it? I like the 50001's, built like tanks.

If you think the 256 Megs of RAM is bad - try 32. That really limits your ambitions. :D


Heh. Which is why those of us who actually browsed the web via our kits tended to use dillo or links for basic browsing and only pulled out your Firefox builds on sites where dillo and links didn't work well. But, it would run anything you could get to compile on the thing, sometimes freakishly well. The Gimp version I had on mine (newer than the one in YDL 6.2) should not have run as well as it did, it was slow, but not as slow as it should have been especially on image scaling. Using the best scaling method (supposedly slower) it was actually faster than the old 2.2 GHz single core Pentium IV in the old laptop. Using the supposed worst (and fastest) scaling method was slower.

Also - it's not quite a standard Linux. There's some custom Sony bits that sometimes make programming it tricky. We never did quite get more modern kernels running on it - which also limits it.


yeah that toolchain was old and so heavily customized from what I gather, but I am not a programmer.

This is why - for all of its faults - I like the PS3 hypervisor approach. Rather than make a non-standard Linux - like PS2 Linux - it abstracts away the weirdness, letting you get on with what you want to do.

Cheers,
Paul


Yep.

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Running Fedora 23 on a Compaq Presario CQ5320F upgraded with a Phenom X4 and GT640
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Re: Saying "farewell" to a part of Sony history....

Postby CronoCloud » 26 Aug 2009, 05:26

ppietro wrote:Oh yeah - it's a full Red Hat 6.2-ish distro. We've updated some of the Libraries since then - but you know Linux - it mostly just keeps working.


Bout the only thing it didn't have that most "normal" RH 6.2 distros had was Netscape/Mozilla, OpenOffice, and Java. It had GTK1.2 so if you wanted newer stuff you pretty much had to compile yourself a GTK2.foo version. Which I did, 2.10.12 at the last for me. QT3 won't compile on it though. It doesn't crash, sure, Dillo will crash and take down X if you look at it funny but the system itself won't. I easily had month long uptimes once I got a second PS2 (the nibelheim) I mentioned before, for games.

The nice thing about PS2 Linux is that you get to use the full 40 gigs of the HDD.


Sweet sweet 40GB. It also doesn't act as a space heater.

Ron Rogers Jr. (CronoCloud)
CECHE01 PS3 (MGS4 80GB Bundle) without OtherOS and with an upgraded 320GB HD
Running Fedora 23 on a Compaq Presario CQ5320F upgraded with a Phenom X4 and GT640
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