[Inquisitor]

Any of you dev types gonna get this? Mine should be here on Tuesday.

While i doubt I will be able to help with the port (my skills aren't that sharp), I may be able to help test and debug builds on the platform if we get that far

Wouldn't that be fun?

[daveb]

I'd like to hear a report about exactly what they include with that kit. Specifically, does it include the full PS2 documentation (a huge stack of 7-8 books totalling maybe 2000 pages)? Does it work with Codewarrior for PS2 or is it GCC specific, or something else? Does Sony somehow give you access to their dev website to download newer SDK's, etc? What kind of crossover is there between the resources "real" developers get and what the devkit people get?  I'd consider getting one of these if it was somewhere near as flexible as the full developer TOOL's.


FWIW, I think the PS2 is very very well suited to doing an FS2 port. Aside from the 32 meg memory issue, it does everything FS2 needs extremely well (especially the nebula effect). The caveat here is, porting it "correctly" to the PS2 is a _ton_ of work. It is not a simple machine.

[Inquisitor]

I'll post when I get it.

As I understand it, you get some (large) subset of the docs and the second DVD, GCC and other open source dev tools, and there is some kind of abstraction layer that sits between the Linux openGL calls and the PS2's graphics renderer. It has been CLAIMED that if it is a stadard openGL app, that it will compile with a switch on the PS2 Linux kit. Dunno, if nothing else, it will be a cool toy

There was a write up, I'll dig for it.
-edit-
http://playstation2-linux.com/faq.php

[aldo_14]

I'd imagine balancing the pipelines would be an utter *****...my Ps2 arch is rusty-to-non existent, but AFIAK the Emotion Engine has about 4 different chips for various purposes and multiple pipelines.... eek.

[daveb]

Linux openGL calls and the PS2's graphics renderer

You'd be very lucky if you got even 1/8 of the PS2's performance capability going through some OpenGL layer. The PS2's performance comes from taking advantage of its multiple processors simultaneously, and managing DMA channels by hand. There's just no way to abstract that in OpenGL.

[Inquisitor]

Dunno, right now I am working on 3rd and 4th hand information

Since you have the real kit, will have to defer to your wisdom in the matter

My kit is on a fedex truck somewhere in Boston, so I probably will see it tomorrow.

We shall see

-edit-
Started digging, found an interview with people who are actually USING it

http://codingstyle.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=153

[daveb]

From the interview

Adam: The Playstation was designed with a very different strategy for displaying graphics information. There's not enough video RAM to store everything you could possibly ever want in there. The idea is to use a fast bus and the capabilities of the vector units to stream data to the GS. This will be a pretty big shift for many x86 game programmers.

now3d: Only 4MB VRAM HURTS! X is limited, by the Sony implementation, but it is workable. It would be better if it was hard coded for PS2 but its OK in its current state for the moment.

This just about sums it up exactly. The architecture is completely 90 degrees different from what Dx/GL people expect. The whole 4mb of vram thing really isn't much of an issue. It could be 2 megs of vram and it really wouldn't matter much. Once you get to really high performance PS2 programming, there's no such thing as "keeping textures in vram". Everything is done in an on-demand fashion - leaning on specific aspects of the PS2 hardware to hold everything together. The challenge with the PS2 is really understanding what Sony intended, which is decidedly _not_ what the designers and users of OpenGL intended

[CP5670]

I guess the system bus must be really fast in that case.

[Inquisitor]

Well, only one way to find out, guess I wait till FedEx delivers

[EdrickV]

I've got the PS2Linux kit. And I'd love to try getting FS2 running under it once we've got a working Linux port. As far as what you get with it, it comes with 6 of the 7 docs (as PDFs) that professional developers get. The one that isn't included documents the IOP which controls input/output and a lot of stuff including, I assume, stuff like the CSS decoder and of course the DVD drive. It's a bit of an old dist, kernel 2.2.1 with USB stuff back ported. There's a project working on updating the kernel and they've already made a release. As far as PS2 specific stuff, there is a PS2GL library designed for use with the PS2's architecture in mind. (It could still be considered a Beta though.) And a partly hardware accelerated Mesa is included. SDL has already been ported. The dist includes several window managers including WindowMaker, Sawmill, FVWM2, TWM, XSM, KDE 1, and a version of GNOME I haven't tried. The biggest pain about the kit is the fact that it needs an XGA sync-on-green compatable monitor for the initial install (unless you want to do it blind, like I did) and the TV resolution isn't that good. It's like 512x384 in X and a usable 610x214 in console mode.

Other goodies include:
A 40 GB harddrive
The Sony Ethernet Adapter (minus the modem part)
A monitor cable with AV audio plug sockets on it
Sony USB keyboard with USB daisy chain port for the USB mouse

The dist appears to be a pretty full one (and a lot better then WinLinux 2001 or Cygwin) but due to the fact that it isn't a standard system compiling programs on it can be a bit of a pain in the neck. There are people who have schematics for making sync seperators to use the kit with a non-SoG monitor, but so far I've yet to find a way to get one for under $100 and without making it myself.

What you don't get:
Access to non-PS2/PSX media in the PS2's built in drive. (That means no DVDs, no audio CDs, no CD-R/RWs.)
No specs on the IOP and related subsystems including the Dolby subsystem and stuff. Interface to at least some of those things is provided by a software layer called the RTE (RunTime Environment) which loads before the kernel. (And actually loads the kernel.)

Other things of note:
The Ethernet adapter is compatable with Tony Hawk 3 and even an AOL user can get online for games or, under the kit, web browsing, using it and Internet Connection sharing and a Cat5 Ethernet Crossover cable.
Most if not all the software on the DVDs is old as this dist was made a while ago.
MPG123 won't compile without changes. Am going to try mplayer now.

[Inquisitor]

Can you get the GCC build to compile? I know it probably won't run, but if it compiles, thatr's a plus

How hard was the headless install? I think I have a monitor that will work, but, just in case

[penguin]

Check out http://playstation2-linux.com/ ... they use the SourceForge code.  It's not hosted on SF, guess Sony has deep enough pockets to buy the SF Enterprise Edition sw from VA

[Inquisitor]

yeah, I noticed that


-edit-
FedEx just delivered.

[EdrickV]

Little update: Can get mplayer to compile but not actually play anything on PS2Linux. Cygwin's not very much better. Want to get mplayer working using the FFmpeg library to see how well it works. (Might be a good library to use for FS2 cutscenes, then we could have our cake and eat it too. It supports a lot of formats.)

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by CP5670
I guess the system bus must be really fast in that case.

IIRC the Ps2 data bus is in the gigabyte/sec range..something unfeasibly large, anyway.  I didn't do any of the Ps2 research - just the Gamecube - so I don't remember the figures.

[Inquisitor]

Well, I got mine up and running, with boot disks for both TV and VGA use.

Sill I get samba working I was gonna use FTP to get stuff to and from, but my FTP server decided to die before I started getting stuff over to it.

Have you used the other web browser? kfm I think it's called?

I am guessing that I am still a couple of days away from trying to compile anything on it. want to get the SDL port installed, and have a look at this "ps2gl" they have up there, maybe try some of the binaries that exist (xmame, a CVS client, things like that).

We'll see

[EdrickV]

To get Samba working using mount -t smbfs you will need a kernel recompile. The smbfs module apparently wasn't built with the original kernel. In the meantime you could setup shares on your computer and use smbclient. (That's what I did.) And setting up Windows Me to use PS2 side Samba shares (using the included Samba) was a pain in the rear. (My single user setup windows name has a space in it, and smb's user things do not like spaces in the user names while Linux itself will accept a user name with a space in it.)

I've used lynx, (which I'm trying to get SSL compiled into) KFM, and w3m. KFM's like Windows/Internet Explorer in that it's a file manager first, browser second. It's an Explorer clone without all the bells and whistles. (Like SSL. Again.) It's also old since it only includes KDE 1. And if/when you want to install stuff off the DVDs, I suggest mounting them as UDF discs. Otherwise it screws up the dependency checking a bit. (No long file names so you have to install the RPMs needed by whatever you want to install in the right order, and sometimes have to guess which file is which due to the names.)

[Inquisitor]

Sounds like a joy.

I'll probably do the samba shares, I maintain a user across my network that is uniformly 3 characters for just such an emergency

Have you tried compiling the GCC version of FS2 from penguin? Since it doesn't have any 3d code in it yet, it might work

Speaking of, I see a CVS binary has been compiled, penguin, I am about THIS close to haveing the group CVS server ready, you have a version of the code that still doesn't have 3d stuff? Might be worth seeing where this barfs in the compile, but I'd need a tar.

[EdrickV]

I don't have Penguin's, I'd try it if I had a way to get it though. I have Vrodic's which still uses DirectX headers and some headers from WINE so that's got a snowballs chance of compiling and none at working. (Linux doesn't have a registry for example.)

[Inquisitor]

This is where we ask...


OH PENGUIN!!!!!