How I Turned The PlayStation 2 Into A Linux Computer

[Music] when you think of the playstation 2 most likely you'll be thinking of all the great games the console has to offer final fantasy gran turismo and the list goes on but did you know sony officially released linux for the ps2 and even went so far as to classify the console as a personal computer so today i'm going to show you just that how you can turn your ps2 into a personal computer hey everyone how's it going my name is tito and welcome to macho nacho productions today we'll be taking a look at an interesting and pretty rare software package that sony officially released for the playstation 2. so 20 years ago in 2002 just a couple years after the ps2's launch sony released a linux kit for the console in addition to the actual linux software disks the kit included a ps2 branded mouse keyboard a 40 gigabyte hard drive the network adapter and a special vga cable to hook it up to a computer monitor and interestingly enough the linux kit was the only official software that utilized this rather unique vga cable when using linux on the ps2 you actually needed a monitor that accepted an rgb signal with sync on green this requirement wasn't a ubiquitous feature on a lot of the computer monitors of the day and sony apparently had a list of recommended vga monitors that were compatible thankfully i have a workaround for this which i'll get into a bit later so even though the linux kit came with a bunch of stuff to turn the ps2 into a personal computer really all you needed were the disks a lot of the other stuff like the mouse and keyboard you can actually simply use readily available generic non-sony alternatives it's actually pretty difficult and rather expensive to get the entire linux kit they show up occasionally on ebay but they command a pretty high price i mean the linux software by itself wasn't cheap either so instead of hunting down and spending a tiny fortune on a complete linux kit i just bought this this is the japanese version of linux for the ps2 i found the japanese version to be the more readily available option out there but there is also a north american and pal version as well anyway interestingly enough the auction i won not only included the official release 1.0 but also a beta version as well and when doing a bit of research online i found an archived press release from a linux convention which states that the beta linux software package was a limited release of which only about 8 000 were produced now i'm not sure if this is the beta version they were referring to but i still think it's pretty neat to have anyway having these dvds in my possession now i caught myself wondering who these kits were made for from what i understand these kits were great for programming hobbyists and was a great platform for learning your way around linux for newcomers anyway since i don't have the full kit i need to supplement all the other components with stuff i already have on hand first i'll of course need a keyboard and mouse for the keyboard i'll be using my wireless 10 keyless filco mechanical keyboard which does also have a usb mini port so i can plug it directly to the ps2 for the mouse i have this cheap logitech m100 which is actually optical and not ball driven like the one that came with the original linux kit now in order to install linux we'll of course also need a hard drive i actually want to see if we can install it onto a ssd so i have this 500 gigabyte sata ssd connected to this aftermarket sata compatible network adapter however from what i understand linux for the ps2 can be pretty picky when it comes to the hardware you're using so i also have an official sony network adapter with an official ide hard drive that came with the north american version of final fantasy xi i'm hoping that in case the ssd doesn't work the official sony stuff will and because this kit does require a hard drive it is unfortunately not compatible with slim model ps2s anyway with the hard drive squared away that leaves one more item that the original linux kit came with and that is the ps2 vga cable unfortunately there isn't just some readily available alternative or aftermarket equivalent on top of that official sony ones are extremely rare and typically are only included in auctions that contain the whole linux kit and to add insult to injury you need a monitor that can handle rgb with sync on green so the question remains how do we get the rgb with sync on green signal from our linux ps2 onto this standard hdmi computer monitor well to figure that out i reached out to bob of retrorgb and he knew exactly what to do he even sent over a couple converter boxes and cables but said the easiest option would be to use an open source scan converter or ossc so i use this as an excuse to buy one of my own and try it out in spoiler alert it works incredibly well and is super easy to use the oss is certainly a powerful tool and bob has a great video going over its basic setup and functionality which is definitely worth watching if you're interested in this device i'll leave a link to it down below anyway i'll be using a hd retrovision component cable to connect the ps2 to the oss and an hdmi cable to connect it to my monitor so with the video processing handled that leaves just two more items i need first is a standard 8 megabyte memory card which will be used to boot into linux and of course a ps2 console here i have a beautiful blue 39 000 unit but as you can see here it is a japanese model this is needed because if you remember i have the japanese region linux dvds which will only work on a japanese system unfortunately sony made ps2s region locked so if you have a north american version of linux you can of course use that on your north american model ps2 alright so now that we have everything in hand let's set it all up first i'll install the ssd into the ps2 then connect the keyboard and mouse to the two usb ports in the front of the console i'll then connect the ps2 to the ossc using the hd retrovision component cables and the ossc to my monitor using an hdmi cable all that's left to do is insert the memory card and then boot it up man i love that sound it gets me every time so even before we get started i have some bad news i wasn't able to get linux installed on the ssd every time i tried i got a blank screen and then was returned to the runtime environment with an error message saying linux ps2 could not be started so unfortunately for those who wanted to use an aftermarket sata adapter and ssd i don't think you'll be able to get it working but no worries thankfully i have an official sony network adapter and hard drive so let's go ahead and put that into the ps2 and start over so to begin go ahead and insert disk one [Music] once we're in the runtime environment you'll notice that there is sort of a pinkish tint on screen to remedy this we simply need to press the rgsb button on the ossc remote for the av2 input which is where our component cables are connected now that the ossc knows what signal is coming from the ps2 we get a perfectly rendered image on screen okay now the fun begins on screen you see we have three options install boot and rescue this is pretty straightforward so we're going to go ahead and select install now it's asking us to change the disk this is something that will happen many times so i just recommend leaving the disks easily accessible at all times see now it's asking to put in disk one again now it's asking us about language i'll of course choose english but it's pretty cool that even though this is a japanese release of the software we can select an array of languages then it asks to select keyboard layout so i'll select us since i have a standard us layout and then yet again it asks us to switch the disk after waiting a few moments we are greeted with a welcome screen it gives us some instructions saying that the installation process is outlined in the user manual but of course this is unfortunately all in japanese regardless let's hit ok and move forward now it's asking what type of system we want and in our case we'll select install window maker workstation the first option which is a graphical desktop environment for linux we're not really interested in the other two options so make sure window maker is selected then hit ok now we need to set up the hard drive here it's asking which tool we want to use for the setup process it recommends disk druid since it should be easier to follow along so let's go ahead and do that huh here it says the partition table on the hard drive is corrupted and that we need to create a new partition resulting in the loss of all data since i really don't have anything installed on the hard drive i don't mind formatting it so let's go ahead and select initialize here we can see that we don't have any partitions to set up linux we'll need to set up at least two a swap and a native partition so let's first set up the linux swap partition we can leave everything as is on screen just make sure to select linux swap then select ok next we're going to add our native partition which will be the primary drive for this i'll be using the remainder of the hard drive capacity for this partition in the mount point field add a forward slash and then make sure the grow to fill hdd is selected as well as the linux native option once your settings look like this hit ok and then hit ok again on this screen when prompted to save changes select yes then on the choose partition to format prompt hit ok again now it asks you to create a hostname let's do something simple macho nacho and then hit ok i'm not going to do the network configuration so just tab down and hit ok again here it asks you for the time zone which for me is the east coast of the united states and here it asks you to set up a root password i'm just going to do something simple here and then confirm it and hit ok now it asks to set up a username and password so i'll go ahead and do that quickly and then hit ok on the next screen just hit ok again i'm not going to change anything on the authentication configuration screen so let's hit ok now it'll start to spool up the hard drive and read the disk on the next prompt press ok and on this prompt it states that linux needs a memory card in order to boot up so hit ok and then press yes on the next prompt and finally here it states that the installation is about to begin press ok and we're good to go now this whole process can take up to around 25 to 30 minutes to complete so i suggest getting up and stretching a little bit in the meantime once done it asks you to insert your memory card since mine is already installed go ahead and press ok to continue after about a minute you get a window congratulating you on successfully installing linux it says to press enter then insert disk 1 and then reset the console so press enter and then give it a couple minutes once you're on this screen go ahead and insert disk one then press the reset button don't mind the green tint on screen because remember my ossc is still set to sync on green so everything will look fine once linux is loaded okay now we're back to the runtime environment screen but this time we can select boot here you can see we have a couple boot options but just go ahead and select memory card let it load and here you can see it running through the boot sequence after that's done it prompts you for your username so just type it in then it asks you for your password [Music] once logged in in order to open the window maker graphical interface type in start x and hit enter and we're in we have linux running on our ps2 and the mouse is working and everything this is just so cool the ps2 is literally a desktop pc now so this is my first time installing linux on any machine ever and the first time actually using linux so i am by no means an expert on the software but regardless it's still really awesome anyway now that we're in window maker let's take a look around by right clicking on the desktop we get a menu which lists all the applications under the graphics category we have an application called which may sound familiar because it is something that still exists today this is an open source drawing utility kind of like a more advanced version of paint apparently we need to install it so let's go ahead and do that quickly now i have to say i have no experience at all with but let's see if we can draw something interesting [Music] [Music] okay so that's my very sad attempt at drawing the macho nacho logo this is pretty neat but let's see what else we can do right clicking again on the desktop if we go down to appearance background then images we can customize our desktop pretty neat another application is something called file runner this appears to be a graphical file management application kind of like windows explorer going back to the menu we have a category called editors with several applications listed the first one is emacs which is a text editor nothing crazy and it works just fine another text editor that's available is mg edit again nothing to write home about no pun intended i guess the equivalent application in microsoft windows would be notepad alright so i'm not going to go over every application pre-installed since that would make this video pretty long but i think this gives you a general sense as to what it's like using linux on the ps2 now if you wanted to get more applications you can actually hook the ps2 up to the internet and download some old applications from the archived ps2 linux website the website is pretty much dead having been closed for over a decade but you can still view everything and even download some of the old hosted applications ok one of the last things i want to do is check out some of the system information looking at the info panel we can see that we're running version 0.61.1 of window maker just for reference i looked up the current version of the software which is 0.95.9 released in april of so it's pretty neat that this graphical interface is still in use and getting regular updates additionally you can access the digital user manual which i'm sure would come in handy if you are actually serious about using the ps2 as a computer which brings me to what i actually think about linux on the ps2 and to be honest i think it's pretty awesome i mean back in 2002 this may have been a viable linux machine for personal computing it had a pretty robust community supporting it and there were a lot of folks making cool applications for it however from what i understand one of the big drawbacks of the ps2's hardware is its very limited amount of ram the ps2 has about 32 megabytes only i mean it really did struggle to run some of the applications such as as for me i won't get any particular use out of it but just the idea of having the ps2 double as a desktop computer i think is very very cool so yeah linux on the playstation 2 is pretty awesome i think it was kind of forward thinking of sony to offer such a kit to the community and i just have to ask if any of you watching actually use this back in the day and for what purpose did you actually code any software to run on the machine or did you use it as a regular desktop computer i'd be very curious to know who out there actually used this so there you have it linux on the playstation 2. just a very cool piece of playstation history anyway thank you all so much for watching and i'll see you all again next thursday [Music] you

Channel: Macho Nacho Productions

Views: 211,351

Keywords: playstation 2, ps2 linux 1.0, ps2 linux kit, ps2 linux 2021, ps2 linux internet, ps2 linux gaming, ps2 linux install, ps2 linux slim, ps2 linux usb, ps2 linux free mcboot, ps2 linux 2022, how to install linux on ps2, how to install linux on playstation, making the ps2 into a computer, the desktop pc ps2, playstation desktop pc

Id: aXigeeOmeV8

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022