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Linux for Playstation 2

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Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#41

Post by ppseafield »

hawflakes wrote: post #37
ppseafield wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hypothetical Datacenter version might have skipped the optical drive, perhaps cutting down on their losses. At launch I doubt they would have had enough spare processors to build them without cutting into their PS3 production capacity. Additionally many game studios reported difficulty in writing for the PS3's processor compared to the Xbox, which had gone with a processor pretty similar to most PCs at the time. So…

Cell used the PowerPC isa as did the Xbox 360. Both were designed in the same IBM facility but separated by a floor. IIRC the Xbox team indirectly learned from the Cell team's mistakes at the process/microarch level. Cell was definitely more weird to code against and Sony put max theoretical perf above Xbox's approach to be more general purpose chip architecture. So strictly speaking it wasn't like most PCs at the ti…

Thanks for the clarification. I must have conflated "more general purpose" -> "more like PC".

Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#42

Post by Wingman4l7 »

Jasper_ wrote: post #14

If you didn't know, this was primarily a tax dodge for the EU. Since it ran Linux, they felt they could classify the PlayStation 2 as a general-purpose computer, which receives a lower tariff rate than game consoles. PlayStation 3 had OtherOS for the same purpose, until the EU rejected the claim and reclassified it as a game console, and then Sony pulled support for OtherOS (it also being primarily a vehicle for pira…

Then Sony got sued in a class-action for removing support for OtherOS!

Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#43

Post by nlunbeck »

ppseafield wrote: post #17
Jasper_ wrote: post #14

If you didn't know, this was primarily a tax dodge for the EU. Since it ran Linux, they felt they could classify the PlayStation 2 as a general-purpose computer, which receives a lower tariff rate than game consoles. PlayStation 3 had OtherOS for the same purpose, until the EU rejected the claim and reclassified it as a game console, and then Sony pulled support for OtherOS (it also being primarily a vehicle for pira…

For the PlayStation 3, another thing driving Linux's removal was that organizations were buying PS3s to use in data centers. But Sony sold them at a loss (IIRC over $100/unit loss, even being sold at $600 twenty years ago) and intended to make it up on revenue from games sold. They also didn't have nearly enough at launch because they were using a brand new processor (designed with help from IBM) and a brand new Blu-…

Iirc the PS2 also got a huge boost by being a cheap alternative to designated DVD players, but it eventually obviously paid off. I wonder how that factored into their PS3 strategy

Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#44

Post by epx »

nlunbeck wrote: post #43
ppseafield wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the PlayStation 3, another thing driving Linux's removal was that organizations were buying PS3s to use in data centers. But Sony sold them at a loss (IIRC over $100/unit loss, even being sold at $600 twenty years ago) and intended to make it up on revenue from games sold. They also didn't have nearly enough at launch because they were using a brand new processor (designed with help from IBM) and a brand new Blu-…

Iirc the PS2 also got a huge boost by being a cheap alternative to designated DVD players, but it eventually obviously paid off. I wonder how that factored into their PS3 strategy

I purchased my XBox One for the same reason (cost-effective Blu-Ray player with the possibility of playing games from time to time).

Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#45

Post by ppseafield »

nlunbeck wrote: post #43
ppseafield wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the PlayStation 3, another thing driving Linux's removal was that organizations were buying PS3s to use in data centers. But Sony sold them at a loss (IIRC over $100/unit loss, even being sold at $600 twenty years ago) and intended to make it up on revenue from games sold. They also didn't have nearly enough at launch because they were using a brand new processor (designed with help from IBM) and a brand new Blu-…

Iirc the PS2 also got a huge boost by being a cheap alternative to designated DVD players, but it eventually obviously paid off. I wonder how that factored into their PS3 strategy

Indeed, although Sony hadn't created the DVD format (Phillips), having it did boost sales of the PS2. With the PS3 Sony was pushing its own format in direct competition to HD-DVD (also Phillips), and I'm sure losing Beta max market to VHS was still in their minds. So they decided to sell PS3 consoles at a much greater loss. It did pay off as well, but the first few years cost Sony a lot.

Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#46

Post by sillywalk »

hawflakes wrote: post #37
ppseafield wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hypothetical Datacenter version might have skipped the optical drive, perhaps cutting down on their losses. At launch I doubt they would have had enough spare processors to build them without cutting into their PS3 production capacity. Additionally many game studios reported difficulty in writing for the PS3's processor compared to the Xbox, which had gone with a processor pretty similar to most PCs at the time. So…

Cell used the PowerPC isa as did the Xbox 360. Both were designed in the same IBM facility but separated by a floor. IIRC the Xbox team indirectly learned from the Cell team's mistakes at the process/microarch level. Cell was definitely more weird to code against and Sony put max theoretical perf above Xbox's approach to be more general purpose chip architecture. So strictly speaking it wasn't like most PCs at the ti…

There's a book about the development of both of them, The Race for a New Game Machine: Creating the Chips Inside the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3 by David Shippy & Mickie Phipps. [0]

It has some details on the awkward position the IBM developers were put in.

Rodrigo Copetti's excellent articles on the PS3[1] and Xbox 360 [2]

and Ars' Hannibal's article on the Xenon Chip. [3]

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6056634

[1] https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation-3/

[2] https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/xbox-360/

[3] https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/06/xbox360-2/

Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#47

Post by phire »

rgovostes wrote: post #28
phire wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (it also being primarily a vehicle for piracy certainly didn't help). The piracy hacks never used OtherOS. The first piracy hack (the PSJailbreak dongle exploit) simply exploited the GameOS usb stack and wasn't released until after OtherOS had already been removed in a firmware update. The only hack that ever targeted OtherOS was a complex memory glitching attack that was pretty hard to pull off. As far as I'm awar…

Thanks for your work reverse engineering PSJailbreak, by the way. ( https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/PSJailbreak_Exploit_Payload_Re... )

I also worked on PSGroove.

Though that was very much a team effort, I knew nothing about USB before working on that. From memory, my contribution was mostly tweaking the code until it worked, I think my PS3 was the first to be exploited by PSGroove.

Though, I wasn't happy at merely copying the sequence of packets USB that lead to an exploit, so I spent some time trying to get a better understanding of how the exploit worked. That document is the result of my efforts.

Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#48

Post by phire »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #30
phire wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (it also being primarily a vehicle for piracy certainly didn't help). The piracy hacks never used OtherOS. The first piracy hack (the PSJailbreak dongle exploit) simply exploited the GameOS usb stack and wasn't released until after OtherOS had already been removed in a firmware update. The only hack that ever targeted OtherOS was a complex memory glitching attack that was pretty hard to pull off. As far as I'm awar…

I recall there was something involving Other OS and soldering a wire into the motherboard.

Yes, that was the memory glitching attack.

But it was a pretty hard exploit to pull off, the required pulse was pretty short and required getting lucky. Nobody ever developed it into something particularly useful for end users, and it didn't directly enable piracy.

While I suspect the unknown person who developed the PSJailbreak exploit did use that attack as a stepping stone towards hacking GameOS, it was not a requirement. And it also could have been done from GameOS once you had kernel level code executing there.

Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#49

Post by lupire »

Jasper_ wrote: post #14

If you didn't know, this was primarily a tax dodge for the EU. Since it ran Linux, they felt they could classify the PlayStation 2 as a general-purpose computer, which receives a lower tariff rate than game consoles. PlayStation 3 had OtherOS for the same purpose, until the EU rejected the claim and reclassified it as a game console, and then Sony pulled support for OtherOS (it also being primarily a vehicle for pira…

I wish I could decide to not pay my taxes, and give a fraudulent excuse, and not go to jail.

Re: Linux for Playstation 2

#50

Post by lupire »

gumby wrote: post #15
Jasper_ wrote: post #14

If you didn't know, this was primarily a tax dodge for the EU. Since it ran Linux, they felt they could classify the PlayStation 2 as a general-purpose computer, which receives a lower tariff rate than game consoles. PlayStation 3 had OtherOS for the same purpose, until the EU rejected the claim and reclassified it as a game console, and then Sony pulled support for OtherOS (it also being primarily a vehicle for pira…

I can tell you that support for this went all the way up to Ken Kutaragi. I discussed it with him. He was also responsible for the Ethernet port. He had real vision for the platform. It was more than a tax dodge.

If the CEO supported it, why didn't it happen?

CEOs like tax dodges and plausible deniability.

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