[retro swim] - Episode 10 - PlayStation 2 Linux Kit

A look at the contents of the PlayStation 2 Linux Kit, and a walkthrough of installing the software.

This week if my first go at editing with Final Cut Pro X, so there might be some points where the sound didn't splice together quite properly. Sorry!

Songs are:

[hardlevel]

can you upload the isos from ps2 linux and share?

[srarcade]

This is awesome, but its like every other retro project I get into- once you've finished it, its like "ok, now what..." The excitement is in the journey yet again. Thanks for sharing.

[CaptainSouthbird]

This was a pretty unique thing that Sony did. I mean, occasionally there were other stories, e.g. Famicom with its BASIC cart, but this actually would be an OEM way of making your console into a full fledged desktop computer. Of course, by modern standards, this would be a painfully slow and limited computer. But it's still interesting. Might do okay as a simple server if you never were going to use it as a game console again.

[heidirichter]

I wanted this back in the day, but never got it, thank you so much for uploading this!

[UPHadmin]

First video I've watched... I was kinda skeptical. But I have to say, this is an amazing channel.

[CronoCloudAuron]

Actually there were Firefox builds available, a PS2 Linux community member did them, only of Firefox 1/1.5/2 though, Firefox 3 won't compile as far as I know. Slow, but usable. For general browsing most of us used Dillo.

[di]

This is pretty awesome I didn’t know you could run Linux on a PS2👍

[CronoCloudAuron]

Yes and no. Normally old Red Hat based distro's came with netscape and indeed Sony once demonstrated Netscape running on the kit (and another version that ran on the normal PS2 mode) but that was never released. To browse the web out of the box you had to use lynx or KDE1x's KFM. Eventual there were community provided versions of Mozilla Suite/Seamonkey and Phoenix/Firefox. The thing will run anything you can get to compile on it...slowly in some cases.

[antdude]

Does this still work today? I recalled Sony removed this option?

[nawalalzoghbi]

Loading... Do not remove the memory card (PS2). Do not open the disc tray.

[badsaddamdotnet]

i always wanted this but with specs so out of date hardly worth buying all the gear again :( if you made me a hdd version and a memory card. i live in brizzy.

[obsidian]

Is it possible for the ps2 to send emails to save pc games?

[mcrazza]

Very interesting video! I remember reading about the PS2's ability to run as a desktop PC and other features (some of which never made it until PS3) way back in Official PlayStation Magazine in 2000/1 but I never saw anything about it again.

I'm not familiar with Linux so please excuse the basic questions. What can the Linux PS2 do? Can the OS be upgraded? Can you do word processing, internet browsing and so on? Anything else?


EDIT:
Can any firewire peripherals be connected and used in the Linux environment? AFAIK the i.Link connector was only used for networking between other PS2s for 2+ player multiplayer games.

[Weatherproof]

I was distracted by playing in the background :P

[nikodemasdf]

Even tho this is possibly one of the most pointless things PS2 was capable of doing, this was a very interesting video. Was there really any point to this feature existing, unless I'm missing something ...

[МихаилВладимирович-шм]

Hello! Give the image on one disk.Thanks

[realFoxBox]

Is it possible for you to backup and upload the ISO for that disk somewhere? I would love to play with the original linux for PS2 but I cannot find an ISO for it anywhere.

[Erikih]

I've got myself a Sync On Green monitor. Works great! But is it possible to change the resolution under X Window? I know the command setcrtmode, but for some reason the resolution gets resetted when i run startx.

[Griimnak]

wonder if you could install apache2 on it and make it a webserver..

[DGTelevsionNetwork]

Would it be possible to instal Windows CE on this? I know there's a version that supports MIPS but I don't know if there's other incompatibilities with it.