PlayStation 2 - Major progress, help me finish!

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Post by **Chewi** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 6:21 pm

Good news. With my newfound knowledge, I had another go at getting gcc 3.2.2 to work. I've only done some fairly simple tests but early indications show that it is working fine.

NOP · Post by **NOP** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:51 pm

Wow, Im new to this forum and I found this thread through google.
I have read the first page but its a lot of info.
Chewi, looks like u have done a lot of work on porting gentoo to ps2

nice to see this

My question is since I own pstwo which as u know does not support the standart ps2 hdd:
Is there a way to use USB HDD as root fs, and also is there a way to make the onboard nic of the pstwo with linux?

Post by **Chewi** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 7:34 pm

NOP wrote:Is there a way to use USB HDD as root fs, and also is there a way to make the onboard nic of the pstwo with linux?

The onboard nic should be the same as the external one though I've never tried Linux on a slimline so I can't be sure. A USB should work in theory but the last time I tried, it didn't work. That may well have been because I did something wrong though so don't panic just yet. I'll try and have another go soon.

NOP · Post by **NOP** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:43 pm

I have a lot of expirience with linux but almost none with ps2

So far I was searching a lot about the topic "linux with ps2 and usb hdd" but with no much success.
Also the whole process of booting linux is not really clear to me

For example what is this RTE for? is it some kind of virtual machine to emulate
supported by the kernel architecture or it is only preparing the console for the kernel.
If its a virtual machine I suppose it will be slow so I guess its not.
Than this kernel which is used. is it patched to support mips 5900? or its vanilla
and everything else is done by the RTE

?
These are the major question I have not found answer to yet...

Post by **Chewi** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 12:24 am

http://gps2.aura-online.co.uk/trac/gent ... tDoYouNeed
http://gps2.aura-online.co.uk/trac/gentoo-ps2/wiki/RTE

I need to update some of that but that should tell you most of what you need to know. You will find some bad news. You need the PS2 Linux DVD or a copy of it. The kernel has to be patched to support the R5900, which is a pain. The RTE provides an abstraction layer between Linux and the IOP, the PS2's other main processor, which handles communication with just about all the hardware except the R5900 and the graphics processor.

NOP · Post by **NOP** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:12 pm

Thanks, I will read the pages.

NOP · Post by **NOP** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:11 pm

Any Idea where this link has gone?

http://gps2.aura-online.co.uk/trac/gent ... TheNetwork

Post by **Chewi** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:18 pm

I haven't written it yet.

But that definitely works, that's what I do most of the time.

NOP · Post by **NOP** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:24 pm

Weh, it looks like the only option for the slim ps2 available now

I suppose u use the ps2dev stuff but right now it looks down

so I cant open the site... will try later ...
Another thing I managed to download a cd with BlackRhino + rte all in 1.... about 200megs or something but it wont
recognise my usb logitech keyboard... and yes I know its ilegal .. I just wanted to give it a try...
The rhino is booting and then I see
localhost login:
but without the keyboard its useless

)

Post by **Chewi** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:03 am

That's more than most of the guys here have tried yet. I'm glad you have no trouble running the RTE. I'll try to give you something more interesting to play with ASAP.

Unfortunately my success with gcc 3.2.2 was short lived. The tests that worked included "Hello World" and a simple linked list program but these were run against a copy of uclibc that had been built with 3.0.4. When I tried to run them against a copy built with 3.2.2, they segfaulted. Just like my experiments earlier this year, the best I can manage is a statically compiled "Hello World". I'm going to keep trying though. I'm sure I can get this working eventually.

There is some good news. I was having a lot of trouble building a cross-compiler of 3.2.2 due to sandbox errors and various other issues. This was strange because 3.2.2 is officially in Portage solely for the purpose of Linuxless PS2 development. It used to build with crossdev just fine but I suspect if you try it now, you'll face the same problems I had. I think this is partially due to changes Gentoo has made in the way it organises its toolchains. I was fairly sure that the key to getting it working lay in --sysroot support, which I happened to need anyway. I set about backporting the --sysroot patches from GCC SVN to 3.2.2. It took a while but I got there in the end. So now it builds successfully with crossdev and we have --sysroot support to boot!

There's something still not quite right because it has trouble finding the startfiles (crt*.o) and fails to build if uclibc is already present. I'll figure that out after I get it to build stuff that actually works.

Post by **Chewi** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 1:56 pm

Very small amount of progress. The linked list program now works when statically compiled. My confidence is renewed somewhat.

22bsti · Post by **22bsti** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 10:24 pm

i read somewhere that you can use a hard drive on the slim pst but it requires some very precise soldering like 40 wires and some of them are VERY small

http://hackaday.com/2005/02/14/hack-you ... hard-disk/

i hope this helps

i was planning on doing the very same thing i have a buddy who is a soldering god now i have to con him somehow

i just found this as well

http://www.hdcombo.com

http://www.hdcombo.com/hdcombo/uploads/fpc_install.jpg

very very sweet

Post by **Chewi** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 10:37 pm

You won't catch me trying that. They call me Ozzy Osbourne Hands.

NOP · Post by **NOP** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:36 am

Hmm too much soldering

) and I dont have several ps2's to try if it works

I want Linux using mass storage as rootfs

Thats it.
We all know its possible... we only need those flints @sony to open the damn hardware specs

whig · Post by **whig** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:27 am

I'm very interested in putting linux on my ps2. The eventual end result will be a headless gentoo web server hopefully, not for X or games (unless it be nethack). The sticking point is that the instructions out there pertain to the original, not the slimline. There are references to Action Replay - I would buy it if that is the easiest way. If necessary I have access to an original ps2 and could do a linux install on it, then transfer it over to mine. I have seen downloads for *rhino, but how do I get the right files onto a memory card to allow linux boot? Keep up the efforts you guys are putting in!

Post by **Chewi** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 10:44 am

A lot of people ask me about the slimline. I'm not clear about whether you have the official DVD or not? I think you do but you're just unable to proceed due to the lack of a hard drive? If that's the case then Swap Magic should allow you to boot a burnt DVD with some homebrew tool on it such as uLaunchELF. You can then use uLaunchELF to copy a kernel and bootloader config to the memory card either over the network (via FTP), from the DVD you burnt, or from some kind of USB storage device plugged into the PS2. I haven't looked into it much but an Action Replay MAX can also do the trick since it has a memory card manager and can also copy from a burnt disc or a USB storage device.

UP · Post by UP » Thu Jan 04, 2007 4:15 pm

According to this Site, the PS3 will support Linux officially. Are there Plans for a PS3-Kernel like for the xbox or any other support for Gentoo on PS3?

It would be really nice, a 3,2 Ghz Cell-Processor, Nvidia GPU, Blue-ray-Diskdrive....
Could be a good Replacement for a Desktop PC.question. www.unreadedpost.com

Post by **Chewi** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 4:33 pm

The beta of the official Gentoo PS3 LiveCD is already out. Watch the progress unfold on the following blog. I have nothing to do with all that though. The PS3 won't even be out here for at least a couple of months yet!

http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/ranger.php

whig · Post by **whig** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 6:22 pm

No, I don't have the official dvd. I understand that is only available with the official kit (hdd, network adapter etc for original ps2). Thanks for the suggestions, have to investigate, tho I'm butterfingers. My first step is making a bootable memory card, running it and then transferring control to the cheap usb flash drive I have. When that works I will buy a smallish 5400rpm usb hdd. usb1.1 is only 0.9MB/s so no point buying a speed demon. Got to say, beats me why Sony makes it hard when they openly permit linux on the ps3.

gtbX · Post by **gtbX** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 6:39 am

I've been following this thread for a while, but I haven't tried it yet as I don't have a linux kit handy (or my original ps2 for that matter).

Tell me if I understand this right: currently, Linux will only boot once it is loaded by the RTE on the Linux kit disk. The RTE sits sort of in between Linux (which runs on the EE) and the rest of the hardware. If you replaced the rte with a homebrew solution, or linux itself, then you could boot an unmodified PS2 with a downloaded boot disk.

I seem to remember somewhere that the PS2's "PS1-on-a-chip" doubled as the I/O controller for the PS2 itself. PS1 games would run solely on the I/O chip, while PS2 games would use it to communicate with the controllers, mem cards etc. Therefore, isn't the rte at least in part a PS1 binary? Is there much PS1 homebrew going on?

Then again, it's late and I could be completely off my rocker.

Post by **Chewi** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:59 am

gtbX wrote:If you replaced the rte with a homebrew solution, or linux itself, then you could boot an unmodified PS2 with a downloaded boot disk.

That's almost right. An unmodified PS2 is not capable of booting burnt DVDs without doing the swap trick. Instead of running the homebrew RTE from a disc, you would copy it to the memory card and use other homebrew software to start the RTE using the Independence Exploit (by putting in some PS1 game of your choice). Getting the exploit to work in the first place requires a bit of extra work. Whichever way you look at it, you can't just simply pop a disc in an unmodified PS2 and expect it to work.

gtbX wrote:Therefore, isn't the rte at least in part a PS1 binary? Is there much PS1 homebrew going on?

I don't know how technically correct that is but I think it's more about the hardware being controlled than the CPU doing the work. C is more or less the same on any architecture. Assembly is different but both the R3000 and the R5900 are MIPS processors so there's not that much difference there either. The good news is that the stuff Sony was trying to hide isn't so secret anymore. The ps2dev community wrote their own libraries, which communicate directly with the hardware. mrbrown's RTE uses these libraries. The problem is that few people in the ps2dev community care about Linux very much.

Post by **Chewi** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:05 am

whig: Memory cards are not bootable as such. You can only execute programs on them using the Independence Exploit by inserting some PS1 game. In any case, the official RTE cannot be run from a memory card (I've tried). On a slimline without the official DVD, you're only choice is to use Swap Magic with a burnt copy of the DVD, I'm afraid.

whig · Post by **whig** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 6:30 pm

Perhaps I misunderstand.... from the Sony ps2boot readme I found

Code: Select all

Booting a Diskless Client
-------------------------

Now you can configure your memory card to automatically boot the new version of
Linux, and optionally, your initrd diskless image too. If you've copied both
the vmlinux file and the initrd.gz image file to your memory card, doing an
'ls' should look something like this:

total 3530
   1 -rwx------    1 root     root          964 May 29  2002 icon.sys
2062 -rwx------    1 root     root      4221358 Nov  1 00:47 initrd.gz
   1 -rwx------    1 root     root          372 Jan  6 16:09 p2lboot.cnf
   1 -rwx------    1 root     root           80 Jan  6 15:02 p2lboot.opt
  17 -rwx------    1 root     root        33112 May 29  2002 penguin.ico
1451 -rwx------    1 root     root      2969616 Oct 31 10:25 vmlinux-2.2.21-pre1-xr7

I figure I just have to supply my vmlinux and initrd (and get the other files), do a few text edits and it will boot?

Post by **Chewi** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 6:45 pm

That means it'll automatically boot Linux instead of showing the RTE bootloader menu first. You still have to use a disc to get to that point though.

garlicbread · Post by **garlicbread** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 11:54 pm

I'm not entirely certain but I always used to wonder about the PS2 Infrared remote controls
the reciever clips into the gameport
you then use a CD to load a file onto the memory card
now each time the system boots up, the remote control can act just like a PS2 game controller

I always used to think that it must be running some sort of code off the memory stick for this
but I could be wrong
there was a patch to the sony kernel to allow full visiblity of the memory card via mount instead of just the linux part
but part of the problem from what I understand is that normally save games are encrypted in some fasion which makes accessing anything other than the linux part nearly impossible

One thing of interest might be HD Loader / HD Advance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Loader
I think you still need the HDLoader CD for it to work
but if the RTE booted this way it could avoid the need for the PS2 disks
I know the RTE loads irx modules plus other stuff off the disk as part of the boot process, if this was hard-coded in some way then perhaps it would cause a problem

another interesting thing I spotted on the wiki was an unofficial patch to HD Loader to allow 48-bit Logical Block Addressing
in other words full use of the HD, I know there is currently a limit at the moment with the linux kernel for the PS2 with regards to how much disk space you can access (I found this out when putting a larger disk in and trying to partition it) but I always figured it was because of the 2.2 kernel
If the problem still exists with 2.4 / 2.6 then perhaps this patch might give some clues