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Hardware

PS2 As PC 220

Posted by timothy from the speculative-semi-fiction dept.
Dark Paladin writes: "What if Sony and AOL stopped whining about Microsoft's dominance on the desktop/entry into the console market, and actually did something about it? Here's an article from The Gamer's Press about how the Playstation 2 could be used as a killer Linux box, and what might happen to the PC world if it happened." It's the same sort of speculation that leads people to wonder why the X-Box shouldn't be the basis of a fine GNU/Linux machine. (Strangely, it places Linus in Holland as well.)
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PS2 As PC More

PS2 As PC

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  • Umm.. You do realize that Sony plans on releasing a Linux developer kit for the PS2, right? The original story was here [slashdot.org].

  • Not really... (Score:3)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @02:50PM (#167617)

    Honestly, I think Sony has realized they can have the best of both worlds. They can capture market from the X-Box for the hobbiests, while still making a profit. How?

    Easy. Because, really, how many people are going to buy a PS2 and not buy games for it? ;-) Especially hobbiests who want to write their own little games: these are the ones most likely to want to check out all the hottest new titles too. Mass publication will still be limited to those who have contracts with Sony. Sony might even come up with minor distribution deals for the hobbiests (more money).

    People who buy it as a set-top box for email and web browsing (who are also likely in the minority, judging from other similar set-top box sales) will probably have kids, and these kids will probably push to get games, too.

    Sure, there are exceptions, but it would be highly unlikely that Sony hasn't done the math, or is following a route that won't still be in their best interests. Even if this route will cause them to lose some profits, it's likely that they'd lose even more to competitors if they chose not to.

    To summarize: the game market doesn't go away. Just the opposite, they enlarge their market by stealing customers away from the competitors. Sony may be only acting in their best interests, but in this case, I think everyone wins.

  • ... it's an X-box. You'd be paying Microsoft for something they control the specs on...

    Think about it before you consider I'm just flaming.

    Sony too, should have you thinking same thoughts.

    It is my humble opinion that we mustn't forget our strengths at being able to engineer *anything* on a hobbyist/cooperative basis [slashdot.org].

    Including platforms like this. I know I'd like to hack on a machine I'm much more intimately familiar with, if even only by stint of association (marginally) with the engineers that designed and built it ...

  • http://www.haveland.com/index.htm?povbench/index.h tm [haveland.com]

    Note the original outrageously great result the Emotion Engine got proved to be erroneous. The new figure (to save you the 470K download and them the slashdotting) is 616.67 POVmark, on Linux 2.2.2, at CPU speed of 294 Mhz (comparing to 1000Mhz PCs at that level). The score of $ divided by POVmark is 0.48. The only other results anywhere near that are AMD PC systems and a PowerMac G4, all of which do outperform the PS2 board, but the nearest price-performace is one of the AMD systems at 0.88. The other AMD systems are at 0.92 and 0.95 price/performance. The G4 is at 1.05 and is running OSX- very likely running just Darwin, with no GUI layer present.

    It looks like if you're into POV, a PS2 can probably render faster than your PC for almost any value of PC. It takes particularly good gigahertz Athlon systems to beat it, or a stripped-down G4 running Darwin to beat it- or a quad Intel system to get anywhere near it ;)

  • If it _does_ become the case that consoles get used for such things and eat up marketshare of PCs- Sony does _not_ make an OS. Microsoft does. So if this starts happening, Sony is benefitted by having the PS2 beat X-Box in that sphere.
  • I am nearly finished with just such a project. I have a small pc that mounts a samba share containing 40GB of mp3s. Unfortunately, the machine runs win2k so I can use the tv-out function of an old nvidia RIVA-128 card. The soundblaster live has an extra card you can get that gives you toslink. I hooked that up to my amp and control it all with a wireless mouse and keyboard. It works, but I have to spray paint the case still (black to match the stereo equip). Realjukebox2 plays the music (version 2 is required to play over network share).
    I am most excited, however, about the new nvidia chipset mobos with the onboard DolbyDigital encoders and graphics. I hope I can find one with builtin tv-out. If not, my next tv should have a vga port for 640x480 (the Mitsu Platinum Series).



    _damnit_
  • didn't i see a story on /. recently about a Linux kit for PS2s in Japan for $200 or something?

    Yes, in Japan, if you have a Japanese PS2. They have said that it won't be available for the North American version of the PS2.

  • Re:This actually is the killer app... (Score:3)

    by kwalker ( 1383 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @12:27PM (#167623) Journal
    Yes, they have. Linuxgames.com has a one-line note from an nVidia developer stating that Linux won't be left out of the nForce.
  • No - it can. I had a rep from Caldera at Networld+Interop sit there and tell me and a few other people that it runs on a 286. I tried to correct him, but he was a sales drone - facts are futile.

    I could be wrong about the model number, but I remember having Linux on one. I also had 386BSD on it for a short time. I had wanted to try it but my machine didn't have a math copro at the time, so I found one of the PS/2's that did. It may have even been a 486.

    It was so long ago... (though according to my bank, my employment is listed with them as "Recent Grad" - that was 8 years ago!)

  • I had Linux on a PS2 a while ago (Score:3)

    by Sabalon ( 1684 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @12:27PM (#167625)
    I think it was a PS2 model 60. A pretty decent machine for 1992.

    I guess I should have resisted :)
  • "32MB of RAM on the PS2 isn't gonna be enough to drop X on it, in my opinion, let alone a ported browser."

    Well actually they demoed Netscape 4.x, as well as (full screen) Real Video, and AOL all running on the PS2 at the E3 expo last month in Los Angeles.

    I've also personally seen X with twm and open xterms on a PS2. (in which I typed "ls").
    Joseph Elwell.
  • When the PS2 Linux developers kit comes out in America I'll seriously consider buying it. Hope it's compatible with whatever Disk/Networking expansion kits come out for the PS2. I'm quite impressed by this little box; I've wasted an uncountable number of hours playing Ring of Red, Star Wars Starfighter, SSX, Ridge Racer V, and just lately Red Faction. It's funny, I bought the damn thing to get away from Linux because I wanted a game machine which would work straight out of the box, no fussing. Now I'd like to get Linux up and running on the damn thing just for shits and giggles.

    I doubt either the PS2 or the X-Box will make much headway as an internet appliance. At least not until HDTV becomes the norm -- NTSC/PAL TV resolution is just too poor to support web browsing.
  • ...of course hardware never fails.

    Vermifax
  • (ie: can't delete files without viewing them first).

    Oh god - the spammers are gonna love this.

    In order to delete those 30 spam emails, you have to view each and every one of them.

  • Re:Appliance Computing (Score:3)

    by Keith Russell ( 4440 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @01:37PM (#167630) Journal
    SEGA tried that with the Saturn. It died a horrible death. Then they tried it with Dreamcast.
    Saturn died a horrible death because it was a royal PITA to develop for, chasing off many developers. Not having a Sonic the Hedgehog title at launch didn't help. No games, no market penetration. What good is expanding a system nobody uses? (see also: Mattel Aquarius)

    What's unfortunate is that the same market penetration problem needlessly afflicted Dreamcast. Too many binary-thinking fanboys pledged allegiance to PS2, and Saturn created too much ill will with developers.

    The premise still works. It did back in the '80s, when everybody had C64s, Atari 800s, and Speccies. The only difference between those systems and game consoles were the keyboards and "mass" storage device connectors. I know quite a few people who used their C64 only for games. Then GEOS arrived, and GeoWrite became their first word processor.

    It can still work today. Now that PS2 has settled in, the "shortage" has ended, and hasty PSone ports are giving way to real limit-pushing titles, there's enough market penetration to start using those USB ports for something besides Unreal Tournament.

    As much as turning a PS2 into a "full-fledged" PC sounds like a killer app, something as simple as Sony's Movie Shaker, a simple video editing package, would be even better. Insert Movie Shaker disc into PS2. Connect digital video camera to i.LINK port. Edit movies with a Dual Shock controller! Add a USB keyboard, and titles are easier. Doesn't matter if the disc boots Linux, Win CE, QNX, BeOS*, or a VAX emulator. It just works. And people raised on Atari 2600 and NES would never picture a game console doing something like that. Now that's a killer app.

    *: Assuming Be didn't give it's last dying gasp in the time it took me to type this.

    We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
  • The RS in RS-232 does not stand for Radio Shack, if that's what you were thinking. And 232 isn't the only RS standard.
  • Check out this Register article [theregister.co.uk] about a company that's going to use the Dreamcast as the base for a "home gateway" that'll play games and do TV timeshifting, among other things.

    As far as the PS2 being a PC killer, Cringely had a column [pbs.org] about that 2 years ago.

  • "Seriously, it's not hard to get Quake running on yer Linux box."

    So maybe you'd like to share that knowledge with the rest of us?

  • > TV screens are cheaper than monitors. TVs may be cheaper than monitors, but monitor prices have come down drastically - and there's little disputing that the visuals on a monitor are generally better than that of a TV, particularly for web browsing and other duties than involve reading text from a screen. $99 will generally buy you a pretty crappy TV, but it can get you a low-end 15" monitor that has better clarity, even if it isn't as big as the TV.
  • The X-Box will never be a killer Linux machine because it is based around an nvidia chipset. Nvidia do not release their programming specifications to the Linux community. Their OpenGL drivers are binary only. We have no reason to believe that they would release the programming manuals for their new chipset, so the best we can hope for out of the X-Box is that the nvidia chipset will be compatible with some older Intel chipset. Then, at least, Linux could boot it. Until nvidia's stance changes, the X-Box will not be a good Linux 3D gaming machine.
  • But there is an issue of licensing. It's fine, according to Linus, for the kernel to load binary modules. It is NOT fine for the kernel itself to be shipped as a binary, without source modifications made public. So the question really boils down to whether or not a driver for something as basic as the system controller can be loaded as a module. The "real" Linux kernel would have to be able to boot, mount a file system, and load the module without help from any uncumbered proprietary drivers.

  • Re:Consider the limitations (Score:5)

    by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @12:41PM (#167637)
    X is not a memory hog. X looks like a memory hog because the system accounting charges the RAM on the video card against the X process. X applications use shared memory to store (and sometimes leak) bitmapped images, and this memory is also charged against the X server. On my very fully featured X server, X takes up about 5 MB of system memory, plus it gets charged the 32 MB or RAM on my video card, possibly twice. If I turn off a lot of the extensions, X uses even less than 5MB. This is perfectly acceptable and the reason people were able to run X on 8MB 486s in 1993.
  • That G4 benchmark looks bogus. It is made with a 400MHz G4 and scores 1233.33; the second best Mac is a 500MHz G4 and scores 360.98.

    The only explanation for that is if POVray suddenly got support for ALTIVEC. If that was the case I would have expected that more Mac-users would flock to the site and submit benchmarks.

  • I know what I'd do... (Score:5)

    by waldoj ( 8229 ) <waldo@@@jaquith...org> on Thursday June 07, 2001 @11:58AM (#167639) Homepage Journal
    The first thing that I'd do is install Bleem [bleem.com].

    -Waldo

  • Hmm, I just got a home cinema setup installed, with Yamaha amp and all the trimmings. I was thinking how nice it would be to rip all my CD's, plumb a PC into the amp and play them that way.

    But a PS2 would be even better. It's small and I could use the TV for the screen. If it was running Linux, I could NFS mount a filesystem served from elsewhere in the house too.

    Anyone know what the graphics capabilities of the PS2 are like under Linux? Just wondering what kind of mp3/Ogg Vobis player I would be able to use.

    Macka

  • From your article:

    1925 MST: I am dreaming about finding Torvalds and taking a rail gun to him.

    And who says playing Quake doesn't lead to violent behaviour ;>

    Seriously, it's not hard to get Quake running on yer Linux box. Maybe a bit harder for the average schmoe than good old Winders but it'll probably run just as well if not better.

    --
    Delphis
  • Reading the Linux Quake HOWTO is always a good place to start.

    http://www.linuxgames.com/quake/ [linuxgames.com]

    --
    Delphis
  • As you said yourself, as they make more units the per-unit price drops. If there is a huge demand for PS2s the price should drop far enough that they make a profit. And even if they don't, unless this is being used as a server or hardware controller (ie no user interaction) it will give them great market penetration. Who really will buy a PS2 for computing or DVDs and then not buy any games? You've already shelled out over $400 for this thing, why not try out the latest golf sim or RPG. It's just like with PCs, people who aren't going to buy the latest Tekken Tag Team Fortress will buy something like Myst or Rollercoaster Tycoon, because they've already got the hardware.
  • One can understand how a journalist could get confused about the place of origin of Linux, seeing as how Linus wrote it because he was dissatisfied with Minix, which _is_ from Holland.
  • I tend to believe most parents would have an easier time forking over $300 for a PS2/XBox over a PC, especially if that PS2 came with a module to allow basic internet/WWW interactivity (including e-mail) and basic functions like word-processing.

    Most parents will buy anything if they think it will help Johnny get ahead in school. Given the choice between a PC, with a proven track record of typing reports, educational software and use in the labor marketplace vs. a "toy" that promises to be "as good as" a PC for word processing, but is primarily a game machine, what do you think they're going to choose?
  • " B, A, START!"

    Will this replace "CLEAR!" as the warning to back off a cardiac arrest victim about to be defibrillated?

    --
  • Slashdot effect if full force.

    : )
  • They mentioned that you could go through your own ISP. I'm sure, however, there will be a push to get you to use AOL.
    --
  • You forget that Sony and AOL Time/Warner own a great deal of movie and music property that they could give PS2 users access to... at a cost, of course. Which is probably why Sony is so hot to trot about killing stuff like Napster.

    Screw 'em all and get a Gamecube. If all you want is games, that's all you'll get.
    --
  • Running MAME from the couch.
    --

  • Isn't RAM basically free right now? So if Sony wants to take over the world, all they'll have to do is quadruple the RAM in the PS2 -- which'll cost them about $50.

  • The PS2 (as well as the Dreamcast) has a VGA-out. Once you add a keyboard and a mouse you can't tell the difference as long as you keep the tower hidden. :)

  • Then they loose all the advantage of open source! (I'm not saying they are smart enough to realise that...) The point is, all they have to do is get Linux installed. They can leave everything else up to the open source community and AOL.

  • This would make me really happy because it would remove the need for functionality from Linux (yes, you heard that right). X-Windows is simply not designed to allow user-level games to talk to 3DXLR8ors. And until this DeCSS thing works itself out I'd rather not have to worry about playing DVDs there either. Linux can just concentrate on being the anti-BeOS -- the no-multimedia desktop.

    When I play video games I want to be treated like an idiot. When I hook my DVD-player up to the big-screen TV I want it to just go. And when I have coding to do, I have coding to do. I've had enough of the PC upgrade cycle! Linux on PS2 will free us from nVidia and Intel's shackles!

  • The fact that Nintendo is losing money on their hardware is simply not true.

    The president of the big N (Mr. Yamauchi) has always held the position that Nintendo will //never// sell their hardware for a price less than the cost of making it. I've seen this remark in several interviews throughout the 90's.
    This is probably _one_ of the reasons Nintendo is still around after all these years.

    /largo
  • ...

    "and implemented with a simple GUI that hides the guts of the system completely."

    Sounds like Windows to me.

  • I'm current at Sun's JavaOne conference, where they have had several demonstrations of Linux/WindowMaker/Java2 running on a Playstation2 equipped with an "early-release" hard drive. Very cool stuff.
  • I've always had my doubts about this. Especially using a kb and mouse. Most everyone I know with a console of any kind sets the console/tv up on one side of the room and then sits on the couch on the oposite side of the room. People would have to rearange everything to accomodate a new set of peripherals. Not to mention that you'd have to get aol to play nice with sony as well as the linux community.Now they could advertise the whole setup (PS2, decent LCD, mouse kb) but how would it be that different from any other internet appliance (in the eyes of gramma)?
  • Aside from the neat factor, the only thing I could see using linux on a PS2 for is to view my Region 2 DVD's. What can a PS2 do that my PC can't? Will Loki games run on it? Will it signifcantly reduce the time it takes to analyze Seti@home packets? or will it just be a neat toy?
  • For those of you wondering WTF Bleem is, it's a PSx emulator for the PC. (get it? a PS2 running as a computer running as a PS1? :)

    It wouldn't work tho...

  • Dont worry about X. It runs on a 32Mb IPaq with still enough room for java to run.
  • I don't know about this idea when it comes to office and e-mail tasks. For games, especially games with a lot of movement, a TV is great, since the lack of hi-res graphics is masked by the frame rate. I tried hooking my Alpha SX 164 up to my "hi res" (> 700 vert lines) TV, but it just doesn't work. Fonts come out horribly. It's o.k. for web browsing, but I have to jack the font size up as high as possible. Maybe with anti-aliasing and no RGB to S-video conversion it would be better, but I don't think you could get too much out of it.
  • I keep seeing these "PS2" headlines and thinking they're talking about the IBM PS/2.

    I really need to wake up now.
  • The number of people who will buy a PS2 so they can run only free software on it is statistically insignificant. IT probably will be possible to run X on the PS2, if only to avoid the bad press from hordes of whining Slahdotters.

    The most likely scenario for consumer use, however, is that Sony will use the linux kernel, but write a proprietary framebuffer-driver like DirectFB for the PS2 hardware.

    They will also probably write their own GUI toolkit, also under proprietary license, that also runs on an X Windows or Linux framebuffer backend.

    Meaning that while the core OS is, and always will be free, PS2 applications and the 'Official' GUI on the System will be proprietary, much like Apple's MacOS X GUI.

    You will have to pay Sony to develop apps to run on a PS2 (since you need the toolkit API and libraries), but you will be able to develop and run those apps on a Linux desktop PC, as long as you have the (proprietary) runtime and devlopment libraries installed.

    There are other markets for a Linux-running PS2 platform - the film, broadcast and sports industries for realtime graphics (realtime mocap-driven characters, virtual sets, advertising overlays etc.) These apps need a solid OS and devlopment tools, which is what Linux is perfect for.

  • The kernel and various other components will be open source, so Sony will gain the benefits of a rock-solid, continually evolving platform. Thats the advantage of open source - take what the community does well and use it.

    But why they would open their GUI, application libraries etc. to the public? Sony have more than enough development muscle to create what they need themselves.

    When it comes to a desktop framework for the average computer user, its clear that they can't leave *any* of that to the open source community, since we really suck at producing anything like that. The open source community is a hindrance, rather than a help in this area.

    I don't know about you, but i use a linux desktop exclusively, at home and at work, and i can't recommend it to anyone else i know, because it just sucks so badly at providing accessible desktop functionality. Of course, there are lots of benefits with a Linux/UNIX desktop (modularity, remote display, customisability etc.) but almost none of them are particularly relevant for a console.

    Maybe we'll get there one day, but I'm not holding my breath, and i'll bet Sony won't be either.

    Sony also want to control the apps that ship for the PS2. Quality Control is extremely important with regard to consoles, while it has been completely forgotten on the desktop PC. They will need the legal clout to enforce this quality, and they will have it by licensing their GUI and toolkit libraries accordingly.

    It may be possible to install 3rd party stuff on a PS2, but you can bet your ass you won't be able to ship a program for the PS2 without first getting (paying for) Sony's approval, or requiring the user to replace the kernel, windowing environment etc. and hence sacrificing compatibility with the Sony-sanctioned apps.

  • what might happen to the PC world if it happened."

    Absolutely nothing will happen to the PC world. Lets see a PlayStation2 running Oracle or some other program in a colo rack. Do you think fortune 500's will rush out to buy a PS2? Get real.

    Look for entertainment purposes of installing Linux on a PS2 fine I could see why someone would be overly excited, however in the real world Linux isn't everything so let's not forget that. Uh no I'm not a Microsoft user I use BSD before anyone decides to troll. The fact remains this is nothing more than a novelty.
  • Heh - "mission critical software that lives depend on." I don't think such a thing exists. When we (we being biomedical engineers) need a computational device that cannot fail, we do EVERYTHING in hardware - that way, it quite literally cannot fail.
  • I'd like to think that one of the last things I did when leaving Sony a year and a half ago was to plant this bee in management's bonnet. Maybe I did for U.S. management, but too often Japan doesn't listen to the U.S. so I doubt I was actually that influential - but it's nice to dream :-)

    What most people are missing about the Linux PS2 as a Wintel killer is that it has very little to do with an immediate business model and very much to do with unseating a powerful marketplace player (Microsoft). Jackson's identification of the "application barrier to entry" was right on the money.

    • A PS2 that can run Linux instantly beats any PC on cost of software alone. Note that this is a marketing perspective, not a detailed technical one. Sure, MS Office might be better than Star Office, but Star Office is free, not ~$500.
    • A Linux distro for the PS2 can be realistically sold for $20, and make a profit because your "developer costs" are mainly the costs to create nice skins and a Sony look-n-feel and configure everything "out of the box." Sell it at the more usual $50 for a PS2 game and you're going to town. Half the price of WinDoze, ten times the functionality (remember, it comes with the marketing equivalent of MS Office).
    • You've now smashed the application barrier to entry and made money doing it. You can run every PS1 and PS2 game, and many of these are titles consumers already own. You can play DVDs and CDs. And it replaces that new PC you were thinking about. And there's thousands of apps available that will run as soon as someone does a ./configure; make install.
    Does this make sense for Sony? Damn straight. One of the things Sony worries about all the time is "What do we do about Microsoft?" Anyone in new business development at Sony at least considers that question on every new business concept they consider. Get rid of Microsoft's hegemony and you've opened up a door for massive new revenue streams, even if you lost money doing it. The fact that you can make money means it's stupid not to do it.


    -----

  • The reason I believe you are wrong is the exact same argument you use, namely: yours (and mine) grandparents do not need to learn to use a PC to use the internet/e-mail/recipe-tracking/etc. and they don't need to know how to program in the bash shell or use emacs. Linux can be scaled down and implemented with a simple GUI that hides the guts of the system completely. Granted, for the "geek market" (which includes the likes of us) it would help the marketing of these systems if there was a way to remove the hood and play like nuts. =)
    ---
  • I agree with you, and I have a hard time seeing past this at times, I guess, but I implied but wasn't very explicit about the fact that I see these taking off more in the general public market, like our grandmothers and aunts and uncles who've been mechanics for the last fifty years or live-at-home mothers and whatnot. You or I wouldn't buy one of these for the PC-like aspects, we'd build an Athlon-based box or something much more powerful.

    My grandma bought a $2000 Compaq (or it was bought for her, not sure which) and as far as I know, she only uses it to e-mail once a month or something. If it were simpler and faster for her to use, she'd use it more, I'm sure of that. (In her case, an iMac might even be simple enough, but it's a bit too late to suggest that now...)
    ---

  • Yes, well, like I said above, I'm thinking simpler than an iMac (and therefore simpler than Windows). This should be something that's self explanatory, for the most part. I've talked to more than one older person who didn't understand what a Start menu(TM) was. I said before, something with a movie-like interface, where it's a very vanilla interface with large buttons and a few main functions that are easily accessible. The device I envision (at least as it comes standard) would be too simple for you or I to use for anything other than its intended purpose of web/e-mail/word-processing. It would be cool to offer ways for technically inclined people to play of course, but what I'm talking about here is (to you and I, and probably most eight-year olds) beyond simplicity.

    But who knows?
    ---

  • Appliance Computing (Score:5)

    by jhoffoss ( 73895 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @12:03PM (#167695) Journal
    ...is what will become prevalent in the homes of the general public. We (/.ing geeks) will of course be some of the early ones to try these types of units out, finding ways to exploit/engineer/just-plain-play with them. After that though, these cheaper units will no doubt have a much easier time finding their way into the homes of the general public.

    That is, only if they're aimed and geared properly for that market. I tend to believe most parents would have an easier time forking over $300 for a PS2/XBox over a PC, especially if that PS2 came with a module to allow basic internet/WWW interactivity (including e-mail) and basic functions like word-processing. For the success in this market, however, it is imperitive (in my mind) that these are extremely simple and intuitive with an attractive "movie-like" interface, or non-techies will be just as lost as with PCs.

    I tend to forget this like most others, I assume, but there are PCs in the homes of something along the lines of 5-10% of the world's population, if not less.
    ---

  • Microsoft's dominance in the desktop market has nothing to do with hardware. Its a software issue. There are plenty of cheap hardware solutions with which one can run Linux, but this doesn't change the Microsoft monolopy on desktop software.
  • Game Cartridges used to have additional hardware, such as memory, to enhance the system resources. It was a hack to distribute some of the cost of the console to the game developers.
  • if i had points i'd mod this +1 funny. I just hope that was *supposed* to be a joke

    ---

  • This actually is the killer app... (Score:5)

    by dsginter ( 104154 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @11:58AM (#167713)
    What happens when chipsets like the nForce only cost a few bucks (this will eventually happen)?

    This will empower things like Tivo and DVD players and even TVs with great gaming abilities. The Microsft tax will NOT be useful for these devices. So why isn't there a REAL movement for putting Linux into these things? The world WILL need it sooner or later.

    I'd like to see it sooner.

    Imagine an open console spec for all manufacturers to use as they please...
  • I ran X on an 8MB 486 in 1993. It beautifully filled my RAM and started swapping vigerously as soon as I wanted to run an application. (486/66Mhz, Slackware 1.03, kernel 0.99p15)
  • How many articles per week must we put up with discussing how makes a 'killer linux box?'

    Let's face it--due to their very nature, open OSes (Linux included but not exclusively) can be ported to and compiled for just about any chunk of hardware that has enough computing power!

    Cal me a curmudgeon, but it just ain't news anymore. Linux can run everywhere. Whee.

  • Admittedly, I haven't seen it up close, but with Firewire for input, ethernet or more firewire for wireless net connections, and TV out for hooking to a $500 Sony Glasstron, wouldn't this make a pretty cheap wearable?

    Admittedly, you'd need a power supply, but consoles tend to use power pretty meagerly, don't they? It might also be a little bulky, but should be more ruggedized due to being designed at least in part for hyperactive 5 year olds.

    What do people think?

    The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

  • Yeah, I screwed up - I admit it. I've made a change, but kept the original in there.

    Thanks for letting me know :).
    John "Dark Paladin" Hummel

  • UM what???

    PS2 games run bare to the metal. Just because you can run a certain OS on hardware doesn't mean that suddenly all the games for that hardware now use the OS. Using your logic all games that can run on the PC are linux games.

    Also, unless there is a HUGE rewrite of all the libraries for the ps2 linux getting a 3d game built for linux to run on the system is going to be hacky if you can do it at all (so I don't think q3a will run or if it does it will run unplayably slow).

    From what I've heard the API for the ps2 is difficult to use because you need to program using the ps2 paradigm in order to get a resonable level of performance out of it. I doubt having an OS between you and the hardware will help with performance one bit.

    The short stroke is games for the PS2 will continue to run bare to the metal as always. They will not be linux games. Sorry.

  • My grandmother has never used a computer in her 80+ years (to my knowledge), and somehow I think she'll get buy without shelling out $300 for email. If she had $2000, I'm sure she'd buy a new sofa set or something else she'd actually use.

    The IA craze is all hype. No one wants to buy a shell of a computer for nearly the price of a real computer. Have you talked to anyone with Web-TV? They likely have a whole litany of sites they want to visit but can't, email attachments they can't open, programs they can't run, games they can't play, etc. Their Internet experience is dominated by "what you can't do that everyone else can", which doesn't engender brand loyalty. Every Web-TV user I've talked to says, generally, "I'm stuck with it until I can afford a real computer".

    --
  • Try a Pioneer unit. I got my DV-333 for 200 USD, and the visual quality is far superior to the PS2. It's being replaced by the DV-343, which supposedly has a better picture yet costs the same. It supports VCD and SVCD, even burnt to CD-RW. If visual clarity isn't worth that much to you, there's an Apex player with MP3 support that goes for $130! So, breaking it down, you can either get: a much better quality player for $100 less, or a similar quality player with MP3 support for $170 less! Of course, neither of these players will play PS2 games, but if all you want to do is watch DVD's, there are better options.

    I don't deny that people buy the PS2 to watch DVD's, but I think they're not well informed about the DVD quality that the PS2 provides. I watched the animated series Clerks DVD on a PS2 and on my DV-333, and the difference was striking (even for a cartoon!). During scenes with action (like someone moving their arm!), the image would become quite pixelated. Well, not quite pixelated; it's hard to describe. Only half of the frame would be rendered (every other line of the frame), so action scenes have a weird blurry/see-through quality. Even the owner of the PS2 had to admit it was pretty bad.

    As for the networking stuff, I don't see how they're going to do it. Few PS2 games out now support anything beyond the standard setup (few even support the multi-tap!), and someone else mentioned the game designer's rule of thumb that only 5-10% of all consoles have any given add-on. Had they included it with the initial shipment of the PS2, I think it would have worked well, with lots of games supporting it. Q3 and UT, two games that could have had a lot of luck with online multiplayer (against PC's and DC's), are already out for the PS2, without support for any networking option.

    --
  • You see these problems as the failings of Web-TV. I see them as inherant to any "embedded" device designed to be simple, easy, and cheap. How many plugins can you fit in 16mb of flash memory when most of it is taken up by the operating system and browser? Linux users on full-fledged machines struggle with Microsoft's and Apple's proprietary formats. Shockwave.com consumes 90% of my 800Mhz CPU just sitting there! If users on full computers can barely keep up with the Internet, I don't see how IA users have any chance.

    Flexibility varies inversely with easy of use. The easier it is for me to install programs and extend functionality, the easier it is for me to remove necessary components unintentionally and reduce functionality. Windows users have a hard time regulating what applications do to their systems, and as a result, many have dozens of programs that run at start up and stay resident, consuming system resources and reducing stability. We blame these problems on the user, but we must remember that these are the same users that are being targeted by IA devices.

    --

  • Consider the limitations (Score:3)

    by Nathan Mates ( 129704 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @12:23PM (#167734) Homepage
    The PS2 is a game console first, which means it's got a lot of limitations built in. Games are used to these limitations right off the bat, as they'll take the tradeoffs for a very limited compatability problem-- if it works on one PS2, it'll (usually) work on all.

    First off, game programmers (of which I am one, and I've got a development box for one of the top name consoles this Christmas at my desk at work) always gripe about lack of RAM. However, we're used to it.

    Most unix/linux desktop/workstation applications are *NOT* programmed with a concern for memory. [Embedded applications are a completely different area, but most linux coders are not working on that.] Virtual memory has always been an option for traditional unix development, so the big RAM hogs like X, gcc, and web browsers just run a little slower on older boxes.

    On the other hand, the PS2 has 32MB RAM, and I highly doubt there'll ever be any virtual memory. If you want to use the HD (which'll be in maybe 5% of PS2s, tops), programmers will have to explicitly manage all RAM and swapping. That's a huge paradigm shift from traditional unix desktop/workstation programming, which is where 99+% of linux types work on.

    32MB of RAM on the PS2 isn't gonna be enough to drop X on it, in my opinion, let alone a ported browser. A ground-up rewrite with a stripped down custom-built GUI (Qt, even though that gives some people the fits) is the only reasonable solution. Plus, the resolution of a TV is just plain lousy. No beans about it. People aren't going to want to use it for reading stuff for long.

    Next, there's the market for addons for game consoles has historically been *very* limited. In the games business, one rule of thumb I've heard is that you can assume that maybe only 5-10% of customers will have any peripheral (ram, input, bolt-ons like the Sega 32X) not bundled with the box. Unless Sony sells a PS2 with a HD and a keyboard, you're talking about a very niche market here.

    Finally, as I mentioned above, there's a different programming mentality between console game programmers and desktop/workstation types. Game programmers are used to precalculating, preconverting, doing as much work as possible to code and assets long before it gets to the console.

    We do not develop on a console, for that console-- we don't run gcc on a PS2. gcc is one of the really bad offenders in assuming it's got as much ram/virtual memory as it wants. We run gcc on a host PC, and use that to cross-compile code. Same with all the art tools, sound/music, etc. There's a ton of work needed to get things done, and consolers are optimized for gameplay, not development.

    Shipping a PS2 with "linux" on it means that they'll have to axe gcc (and lots of other development tools, I'm not singling it out), as there's no realistic way they're going to run on the PS2, building for the PS2. Is unix without a compiler really unix? In my mind, nope. I want the power to tweak out anything on my system, and run what I write. Consoles can't do that.

    Nathan Mates
  • Maybe he's the one who ported linux to PS2 for his missile control thing :)

    Oh shit don't tell me he actually did something good?
    • Grab a shoe box
    • Put a label on it saying "Linux"
    • Put some C4 inside and connected it to a big red button saying "Start Button"
    "killer linux box"
  • One of the things which is great about making a linux distro for a box like the PS2/Xbox (and possibly NGC too), is that the hardware is the same on all the units, and that means very easy installation for end users... And THAT means, provided it becomes a success, a lot of people might get a good impression of Linux, thus making them interested in running Linux on their Desktop PC's as well. A great thing!
    And even if they not, Linux' sure would get some well-deserved good press ;-)
    __
    Greets, Øyvind Berg ~ ËlaC|n
  • I've heard of other devices using similar schemes. I remember reading (as a Slashdot quickie, perhaps? Maybe ~12 months ago? not sure...) about a Eastern European hospital using an Atari 800 as a data acquisition/display device.

    Also, I witnessed first-hand a bicycle shop that used an NES cartridge to aid in wheel adjustment. There was a sensor thingamabob that would measure the true-ness of a wheel as it spun... the sensor thingamabob was connected to an NES cartridge which was plugged into an NES (obviously) that displayed the results on a TV screen.


    http://www.bootyproject.org [bootyproject.org]
  • I tend to believe most parents would have an easier time forking over $300 for a PS2/XBox over a PC, especially if that PS2 came with a module to allow basic internet/WWW interactivity (including e-mail) and basic functions like word-processing.

    SEGA tried that with the Saturn. It died a horrible death. Then they tried it with Dreamcast. Now they produce games for Nintendo. How wrong is that?

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Console game companies (Sony, MS, Sega, Nintendo) sell the console at a loss, much like cell phone companies give away cell phones, so that you will run out and buy their games. They receive licensing fees for games that run on their platforms. These fees more than make up for their losses on hardware (well, except in Sega's case ;) If people start to buy large quantities of consoles, but don't buy games to run on them, the business model will fail. At that point, these companies will either stop subsidizing console prices, or will put in protections to prevent anyone from using them except as game consoles.
  • If consoles get used as PCs, their price will increase to around that of PCs. There is nothing (apart from perhaps volume) about a console that makes it intrinsically cheaper than a PC... The only reason they are cheaper is that they make the money from gaming licences... and if the platform is open, that revenue stream dissappears, and hence, the hardware price increases. Not that this is a bad thing neccessarily...

    rr


  • The cheapest iMac is $900.
  • You need something like Webplay [sourceforge.net] and a $100 junker Intel computer. With a big hard drive, of course.

    My only regret about my Webplay jukebox is that I can't afford to put in a bigger hard drive at the moment.
  • When's AOL going to start sending out PS2s to everybody? I bet you could build a sweet server farm...

  • understand this (Score:3)

    by referee ( 191944 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @12:45PM (#167759) Homepage
    I don't think you understand the point of the article. The idea is that if AOL & Sony want to combine efforts they can make an idiot-proof version of linux. One with just email, web browser and a link to connect to AOL. That's it. Think kiosk.
    So if you want to play a ps2 game just start it up with a ps2 game in the tray. Want to browse or send email? Just pop in that in that AOL CD/DVD. This disk would boot linux, but who would know?
  • Thats why I think the PS2 can never catch on as a computer replacement. People think to do computer tasks you have to have the newest, fastest, fanciest computer there is. They will always perceive the PS2 (or any other Web Applicance or productivity appliance) as "limited" and so will go get a "real computer".

    From my experience, people who are very computer illiterate and want only to check their email and/or browse porn DON'T want a big complicated computer (read: standard PC), for fear that they may move an icon out of sight, or accidentally delete an important file. These fears could be somewhat alleviated with the PS2. For instance, the UI could load from the CD/DVD and run in a read-only state to prevent accidental deletions of icons, files, etc. All saved emails, web pages, documents, etc. could be stored on the hard drive or a mem card and require special steps to delete (ie: can't delete files without viewing them first).
  • It's a fast chip, but it has some brain dead limitations. Its lighting is not perspective correct, which can look very bad in some situations, and large geometry can cause problems if it's not tesselated. Just takes a little extra effort to squeeze good rendering out of the PS2; it's not impossible.

    -John
  • Especially if Saddam Hussein is using them to play that new WTO game.

    Bryguy :)
  • [custom PS1 solution for hospitals]... it's used to access patient records for waiting room-type purposes. It's definitely not used for anything that is time or life critical.

    As we all know, hospitals certianly don't consider patients in the waiting room to be time critical.

    HMO's should love this, as they don't consider what goes on in the rest of the hospital to be life critical. Most importantly, and above all else, it reduces costs.

    Time-Life would sue, because of use of the term "time or life".

    I always wondered how often the PS1s needed to be replaced

    I've got a kid who has spent endless hours mastering Spiro 1, 2, and 3. Machine is two years old. Still works great. She's starting to get bored with it. I can assure you that kid-handling of this mahcine and its disks has made me cringe sometimes -- but the machine still works.
    --
    "Linux is a cancer" -- Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft.
  • How they input patient information with that crappy gamepad, I'll never know. ;-)

    Patient has a history of heart problems: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right...
  • (Strangely, it places Linus in Holland as well.)

    Maybe they mixed up Linus with Guido?

    More likely, the writer's kid brother (who the writer consults on all matters geekish) mixed them up.

    Anyway, that's the tech press for you.

    OK,
    - B
    --

  • It has taken 10 years to get my grandparents to buy AND use a computer and now I am going to convince them to use a Linux ("What's that, a new medication?") box made from a video game machine ("Games are for kids!")

    The reason MS dominates the market is that they got into the market, squashed the competition, there was no alternative and now most people don't care and don't want to learn something new.

    It is hard enough to get people to change software, but this author thinks you can change what software AND hardware someone uses. I don't see this happening for a long time, if ever.

    =-=-=-=-=

  • Let me see if I get it: as long as it has a processor, someone will get Linux running on it; no matter it's a toaster, refrigrator, tv, etc.

    Steve Ballmer once said Linux is virus, may be it is legitimate. This man really have foresight - Linux would be spreading faster than virus and reside in many devices.

    Sorry Steve, I bashed you for speaking ill of Linux. I was wrong.

  • PS2 manufacturing cost. (Score:3)

    by Shukaido ( 255957 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @12:11PM (#167787)
    Something about Sony's Linux PS2 is puzzling me. Has the manufacturing cost of the PS2 come down enough yet for them to make a profit on the consoles alone?

    It's well known that in the console world, Sony, Nintendo, et. al. subsidize the cost of their consoles by charging a royalty on every game sold. When the PS2 was first announced in Japan in late 1999, the people at the Microprocessor Report predicted that both the EE and the GS (the PS2's CPU and graphics chip respectively) would cost Sony about US$350 each to manufacture.

    It's also well known that over the 5 year life of a console, die shrinks with the chips eventually bring the console's manufacturing costs down below the console's retail price. Has this happened yet?

    If not, don't expect Sony to be making their Linux PS2 widely available (I think only ~4000 were made).

  • Insider knowledge (Score:5)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Thursday June 07, 2001 @11:59AM (#167793) Journal
    Actually, not really. I know of one company that's developing medical software that uses the PS1 as the platform. TV screens are cheaper than monitors. PS1s are cheaper than PCs. And once the software is in the CD tray, the thing never has to be opened again.

    Replacing or upgrading the software just requires a reburn and a few stamps for postage. Of course, these are just clients to a much larger machine somewhere nearer to the IT department.

    How they input patient information with that crappy gamepad, I'll never know. ;-)

    Dancin Santa
  • It will be subsidized with a subscription type technology. Here's how I'd envision it working in the Microsoft world:

    You buy your little home terminal (the X-box) for cheap, either near cost or possibally at a loss. This will work as a game console as is. However it will also have the ability to get internet functionality. To do this you'll need to subscribe to Microsoft's service (MSN) and pay a monthly fee. The applications for e-mail, wordprocessing, etc won't actually reside on your system, but will come down the network (Microsoft's .NET).

    The moves MS has been making lately (Xbox, MSN parterning with Qwest, the whole .NET software solution, etc) aren't being done in a vaccuum. They are all interrelated.

  • The problem with that scenario is that the current business model stops working. The game consoles are all sold below cost, and subsidized by revenues on the games. What happens when you have an application that replaces gaming (no further game sales for most buyers) and doesn't give much in the way of revenue either? At least with AOHell, the user supplies their own hardware. If you try doing this with a Playstation 2, you either have to raise the price of the console to sell it at a profit or accept the bleeding from the subsidy going to the users who won't be buying games.

    On the other hand, this looks like a great way of killing Microsoft's X-box: buy lots of subsidized units and put Linux on them, populate whole Beowulf clusters with the things, and otherwise go hog-wild at Bill and Steve's expense.
    --

  • It does mention printing. It mentions getting HP to make USB drivers for its printer for the PS2. I really don't see that happening, though. What I do see the posibility of happening, is Sony getting HP to make a small and fairly cheap Deskjet that's all black, to match the PS2. Then branding them Sony and putting them on sale in electronics stores right next to all the accesory controllers and such. But, Sony, being as big as they are, could just about as easily make their own printers. But for some reason I don't see that fairing to well in America, if for no other reason than finding extra ink cartridges for the thing.
  • Companies like AOL are in it for the greenbacks period. While a PS2 running a linux varient might appeal us geeks running *inx and spending too much time on /., I tend to doubt the demand wouldn't be nearly enough to gain AOLs intrest.

    There aren't all that many Linux buffs with AOL accounts, for obvious reasons. Considering their reputation for utter leetness I doubt many would be eager to sign up just to get their PS2 online. I mean.. who here wants to admit to signing up with aol? *G*

    And on the flip side, how many AOLers can hack X11? (well...maybe kde.. *grin*)

    Anyway long story short, putting linux on game consoles is something best left to geeks :P


    Whats a sig?

    ------ cat ~/lamesig >> ~/lamecomment ------
  • much appreciated
  • "Linux can be scaled down and implemented with a simple GUI that hides the guts of the system completely."

    In fact, I'm teaching spending July trying to teach senior citizens how to use the Internet, and I hope to find a cache of old 486 machines I could load Linux on and give to them as "email machines". I'm hoping to configue them to boot right into a web browser or email client, depending on user needs. Speaking of which, can anyone recommend a really easy to use web browser or email client for Linux? I know it sort of defeats the purpose of the OS but if I can't make it easy, I'll have to use freedos (freedos.org). If you have any thoughts, you know how to email me...

  • files on ps2 memory carts (Score:3)

    by duncanIdaho.clone() ( 457271 ) on Thursday June 07, 2001 @01:16PM (#167824) Homepage Journal
    it sure would break the ice at job interviews if you could bring your resume on PS2 memory. After reading it over, you and the interviewer could knock out some Tony Hawk with a saved game.

  • I would think that companies such as Sony would want to discourage these kinds of uses for their hardware. Afterall, they are selling their hardware at an enormous loss, in order to make up that loss on sale of games and other software. That's how they can make nice hardware so cheap.

    How in the world would they gain back their losses if most of the people buying their platform were using Free (as in beer) software? They would be screwed. Which is why this will never happen.

  • ...is what will become prevalent in the homes of the general public.

    Which is exactly what John Dvorak said 2 years ago, and he's still wrong. Just look at things like the i-Opener and related "appliances". They have all failed because there are already cheap PCs out on the market that don't limit you to just e-mail or just games (which, on a larger scale, is why a lot of people use Unix and Linux: flexibility). Why would you buy a single-purpose machine when you can have something much more flexible for the same price or slightly more expensive? Also, people will always go with something familiar, and Windows is very familiar to most of the public.

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