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EdSchouten
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 07 Oct 2003
Posts: 79
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 Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 11:48 pm Post subject: Playstation 2 kernel development |
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Hey guys,
I am planning to buy one of those Playstation2-Linux kits (if only those sheep at linuxplay.com would respond to my e-mail).
Here's a list of the available kernels:
2.2.1 <= nah
2.2.21 <= hmmhmm
2.4.17 <= that's that kernel with the exploits, right?
It seems that Playstation2-Linux is like... dead.
Though I'm not a real programming hero (IT student with 3 months of C-experience), I want to try to port some of the drivers in 2.4.17 to the linux-mips.org tree (if they submit them to their tree), so they will have a more 'trusted' future.
I downloaded the 2.4.17_ps2 kernel from
http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/PlayStation_BB_Navigator.html
and I diff'd it against 2.4.17 from kernel.org and I saw the diff was almost 60 MB! When I looked a little further, I saw the guys at Sony had stripped the kernel a little bit (removing all the arch's except MIPS for example), so that explained the huge diffsize.
I also diff'd some of the files in arch/mips/(somearch) with one from 2.6.4 and it seems that not many things have changed in the mean time, so arch/mips/ps2 support isn't hard to build.
Framebuffer is a bigger problem, because I don't know what happened with that. vesafb.c for example shrinked like 60% in the mean time.
My question is:
Are there any people around here that are:
- porting Gentoo 2004.0 to the Playstation
- good kernel developers
- Playstation 2 (with Linux kit) owners
?
It would be nice to revive this platform from dying out.
Yours sincerely,
Ed Schouten |
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thagame
Apprentice
Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 210
Location: Windsor, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:39 pm Post subject: |
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| not to sure on that situation, i dont see too many people being interested in porting linux on thier console, it died away because people only bought the system for gaming and not for linux development, more people are trying to make an emulator for ps2 in linux then they are linux in ps2. |
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frameRATE
Guru
Joined: 28 Apr 2003
Posts: 386
Location: Orange County California
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EdSchouten
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 07 Oct 2003
Posts: 79
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| Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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| frameRATE wrote: | I'm ordering one as well..
www.playstation.com has them for 99 dollars. .. I'd just get it there.
I'm interested to know the chances of running gentoo on it. |
It runs on it, but believe me, it isn't like... really good.
Gentoo 1.4 RC1 with only binary packages 
You can get it on the www.playstation2-linux.com site. |
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mattmatteh
Guru
Joined: 10 Mar 2004
Posts: 449
Location: near chicago
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 6:34 pm Post subject: |
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| anyone still use the ps2 linux or gentoo port? i have been busy but thinking of getting back into it. linux or the gentoo port. more of user than a developer. |
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Kumba
Developer
Joined: 16 Jul 2002
Posts: 393
Location: Sigma 957
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| Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 9:15 am Post subject: |
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From what I can tell, it'd be better to leave the PS2 linux scene to focus on better things. My general opinion is that gentoo is well, too "advanced" of a distro for the PS2, primarily because the tools and kernel Sony released with the kit are so far out of date, it's really not a laughing matter. The PS2, while being in the MIPS family, is such a unique chip design, that it isn't supported out-of-the-box by compilers and assemblers, otherwise we might have some kind of support for it by now. That, and no one with the skill to fixup the kernel has ever emerged. Most of the senior-level PS2 Hackers seem more focused on userland things and doing stuff with the PS2's various subsystems than on hacking a newer kernel.
I did hear on the ps2-linux forums of someone doing some work on porting a modern 2.4 and 2.6 kernel to the PS2 kit, but they offerred no details, so I could never independently validate their statement. If this is the case, then it would be my hope said work would also include patches for modern compilers too, but I don't think this is the case.
That all said, I keep a mirror copy of the original porting work one guy did to get gentoo onto a PS2 incase anyone with the time and dedication wants to step forward and pick it up, but I don;t see this happening before the EOL of the PS2 system (and debut of PS3, a PPC-based design).
--Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic |
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sOuLjA
Guru
Joined: 26 Jul 2002
Posts: 366
Location: germany - hannover
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Chewi
Developer
Joined: 01 Sep 2003
Posts: 886
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
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Gentoo on Alternative Architectures
(not really for the kernel but still...)