April 20th 2008 - PlayStation 2 Linux Up and Running

System.out.println("hi") ;

After the successful installation of PlayStation2 Linux another nice set of photos comes when the PS2 boots up Linux

Boot the PlayStation without disc, just with the MemoryCard inserted

And then it appears our very good friend Tux


This MemoryCard save file has the kernel itself and the initrd ready to be loaded from the RTE disc

Details screen

File copy/delete menu

Then I inserted the RTE (DISC1) into the PlayStation disc tray, and then the usual load screen came up

(be sure to press and hold Select+R1 to boot the RTE disc into NTSC mode, otherwise it will boot in VGA mode)

Then highlight the "Boot" icon


After it appears the kernel, initrd and root device settings
(stored on MemoryCard)

MemoryCard

Single

Emergency

Linux DISC

I selected MemoryCard to load the kernel and initrd with the default options using as root device /dev/hda1

After selection the kernel and initrd are loaded into memory

The busy box stuff when loading modules and detecting hardware

(ugly screenshot. I know, but it's the only one I have)

Here we can see the so expected message "Welcome to PS2 Linux"

(Another bad screenshot, but that screens came so fast I could only take that picture of them)

Checking root device (/dev/hda1) ounting filesystems and bringing up network interfaces

PlayStation 2 Linux login prompt

(Bad screenshot because of the window light)

Login as root and doing the classic uname -a to see the kernel version, hostname and machine architecture

It can be seen that PlayStation 2 has a mips processor

After doing startx without parameters I realized it goes into VGA mode with no params.
So I had to reboot the bad way (power unplug) and reboot to start the X server into NTSC mode

(to view it on my TV since any of my VGA monitors support SyncOnGreen)

X starts with the WindowMaker window manager ( I want to change this since I preffer gnome)

After fooling around with the WindowMaker and with the system, I shut down the PS2

And the PS2 behave more like a PC than a game console


Well this firs boot was nice since I waited so long to see it and handle a game console like the PS2 with a GNU/Linux operating system.

This is not the end, but the beginning of a long jounrey of installing and configuring GNU Linux in several consoles (DreamCast, GameCube, X-Box and even a PlayStation 3 if my budget allows me to)

Thanks for reading and wait for the next post.
Isamu