6 ms·

Sony PlayStation 2 Development Kit (2020)

119 points by ericzawo 3y ago

fredoralive 3y ago
Does anyone know how many European PS2s actually shipped with Yabasic? AFAIK the tax ploy failed so they stopped at some point, and my slim PS2 doesn’t list any discs on the box content list. Although it was second hand so it could have gone missing if it was unlisted for some reason. Edit: I was slight hasty, it does have some unlisted discs in the box, but neither “bonus demo 8 (you)” (©2004) or the “Network Access Disc” seem to have Yabasic on them.
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
I made it almost 1:30 into the video. These guys are very annoying
mackman 3y ago
Pretty useless video. The dev kits had both a Linux PC and a PS2 target board in the same chassis. These guys never got past the Linux login prompt. Now the PS3 dev kits were more interesting. I used a second gen one, a stainless steel box about the size of 4-6 large pizza boxes stacked up. The first gen was twice that height.
- Lammy 3y ago
  > These guys never got past the Linux login prompt. Logging in to the Linux side isn't even part of normal use for a PS2 TOOL. The Linux system runs the RPC so you can connect it as a target in ProDG or whatever, then it pokes your code into the memory of the PS2 side.
- klik99 3y ago
  PS3 dev kit was my first console dev experience, pretty late in the cycle so the dev kit looked like a beefy consumer model. We had one of the second gen ones in the office though. I miss really getting to know the machine and working with the spus, now that consoles are really just pcs it loses that special feeling of really taking advantage of the hardware - however that's just nostalgia, I don't really want to go back to that, but I do have fond memories
  - cubefox 3y ago
    It is ironic that modern consoles are so close to PCs now, but PC games were much more popular back then. Nowadays there are hardly any big PC exclusives anymore, and many console ports are lousy, despite the extremely similar hardware. I guess much fewer people own PCs nowadays.
    - Quikinterp 3y ago
      There are lots of PC exclusive games that are immensely popular, and I'd argue some of the most popular games in the world. csgo, valorant, league of legends, etc. I think the reason why you won't see any big exclusives on PC is that because consoles are close to PCs, big games should be ported to console otherwise you're missing out on huge markets. Beyond the live service type games I mentioned earlier, there's also a ton of smaller indie-AA type titles that are PC exclusive. Even that is dwindling down though since porting gets easier and easier for indie devs
      - cubefox 3y ago
        > I think the reason why you won't see any big exclusives on PC is that because consoles are close to PCs, big games should be ported to console otherwise you're missing out on huge markets. Yeah, but today it is mostly the other way round: Big console games get ported to PC. Exceptions like Cyberpunk 2077 (which was a PC-first development) are increasingly rare. Smaller games are another matter.
  - maccard 3y ago
    There's still plenty to learn about and deep dive into, even with the current batch of consoles. The most obvious difference that is openly available to talk about is unified memory. Sure it exists on some PC platforms, but you can't rely on it being there.
colejohnson66 3y ago
Can anyone explain why dev kits are always so much larger than the release product? I get that some shrinking may occur after the dev kit is released (board revisions) and that (possibly) the kits need to support more things inside, but they always seem comically large. For another example, the Nintendo DS (Nitro) dev kit, for example, is also a relatively massive box, but with a full on DS still hanging off the side of it.
- ralusek 3y ago
  I assume because they need to get in and out, swap things easily, and that making it all fit is probably one of the later concerns.
- fredoralive 3y ago
  Beyond just having more stuff inside, making something small and stylish costs more in time and money, so dev tools tend to be more functional as they aren’t a mass market product.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    You can amortize that cost by just reusing what work you already are doing for making the actual device.
    - georgemcbay 3y ago
      Dev kits for game consoles typically started shipping well before the actual device hardware did to give external developers enough time to create launch games. It wasn't uncommon for the dev kits to go out a year or more before the console shipped to retail. This is particularly true in the era before consoles were basically just locked down x86 PCs and thus developers needed access to a variant of the actual hardware to port their games/engines.
      - charcircuit 3y ago
        That doesn't contradict with my point. There are also logistic advantages in making the device small.
seabass-labrax 3y ago
A second-hand PS1 demo disk that I acquired had an advert for Net Yaroze, along with a little game made using the kit; as someone who had just started programming at this point, it was an exciting concept. I was rather disappointed to discover that they were no longer even sold by that time! Nowadays, I have rather mixed feelings about dev-kits: on one hand, having dedicated debugging hardware is fun, but since truly cross-platform game engines became a reality in the 2010s, these machines have little purpose except to facilitate gatekeeping on the part of console manufacturers. Writing a little OpenGL, Vulkan or now WebGL and compiling with open source compilers for a variety of platforms seems infinitely more practical than signing secret contracts with officious console publishers.
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  To be fair, a big part of those cross platform engines becoming a reality was the other platform owners following Microsoft and standardizing console hardware on PC architecture. It wouldn't really have been practical to do that kind of thing in the PS2/GameCube era when you had them still inventing their own 3D pipelines and trying to differentiate on that.
- capableweb 3y ago
  If you want your game to end up on a PlayStation or Switch, you'll still need to link/integrate their closed-sourced SDKs, so we're close to the "everything is built with open source compilers" but not quite there yet.
- Uvix 3y ago
  Microsoft allows Xbox One/Series owners to enable Dev Mode on their consoles and run their own adhoc software on them. No secret contract allowed until you want to start selling your game.
  - psychphysic 3y ago
    And up until recently you might even be able to run a closed beta and have people access your game on retail mode! Or well some emulators could be.
pbiggar 3y ago
I worked with one of these. I did an internship at SCEE in 2003 to port the Eyetoy camera driver to Linux to work with ps2linux. Sadly, it was nerfed by legal right after we released it as GPL. I fixed it up to keep the proprietary stuff in a separate kernel module, but alas I was gone at that point and it never got past legal afaik.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  You were a dude after my own heart. I had two EyeToy cams from buying EyeToy Play 1 and 2, and obviously only needed one on the console, spent many hours trying to get it working on Linux, which was surprisingly difficult, whereas it worked on Windows with ease. Those were the days huh! I had the PS2 Linux kit too, loved tinkering with that.
aappleby 3y ago
Ah yes, the TOOL. I did not have to deal with that thing directly, but the rest of the team hated them.
gumby 3y ago
I remember those EB machines. I only ever saw a single one, in Japan, and never used it. We actually started working on the PS 2 before there was any hardware at all (even the Toshiba CPU had not been finished) and wrote the simulator so development could start before the hardware was available. Oddly enough the first time I ever clapped eyes on a production PS 2 was at Fry’s, and it was a slimline (2nd gen) so that would have been five or six years after launch. We were also working on the Dreamcast at the same time, but less deeply. Obviously there was no direct overlap. Luckily I never ended up visiting both companies the same day.
- aap_ 3y ago
  That's really interesting. Was the emulator called SKY by any chance? And do you know if it survived in any way? As a PS2 fan I'd so much love to see it.
  - gumby 3y ago
    I don’t remember that name. Part of it (a plug in for the emotion engine) might never have been available outside SCEI, I don’t know. The main part (CPU and memory emulator) we wrote was released as open source and for all I know may even survive today for modern processors.
h0l0cube 3y ago
> The upgraded model DTL-15000 with the Performance Analyzer is especially rare and was a more expensive unit so developers tended to only have a couple and used them for debugging performance issues with their games. I had a chance to work with one of these. It was amazing to get a non-intrusive profile that provided cycle-level data of all the chips in the Emotion Engine, as well as memory access and DMA state. The real take-away was how much more important memory access was to compute. Memory locality, cache preloading, and predictable control flow had a huge bearing on performance, and that's true more broadly for high-throughput DSP-style workloads including that in high-performance gaming.

119 points by ericzawo 3y ago

Does anyone know how many European PS2s actually shipped with Yabasic? AFAIK the tax ploy failed so they stopped at some point, and my slim PS2 doesn’t list any discs on the box content list. Although it was second hand so it could have gone missing if it was unlisted for some reason. Edit: I was slight hasty, it does have some unlisted discs in the box, but neither “bonus demo 8 (you)” (©2004) or the “Network Access Disc” seem to have Yabasic on them.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

I made it almost 1:30 into the video. These guys are very annoying

mackman 3y ago

Pretty useless video. The dev kits had both a Linux PC and a PS2 target board in the same chassis. These guys never got past the Linux login prompt. Now the PS3 dev kits were more interesting. I used a second gen one, a stainless steel box about the size of 4-6 large pizza boxes stacked up. The first gen was twice that height.

Lammy 3y ago
> These guys never got past the Linux login prompt. Logging in to the Linux side isn't even part of normal use for a PS2 TOOL. The Linux system runs the RPC so you can connect it as a target in ProDG or whatever, then it pokes your code into the memory of the PS2 side.
klik99 3y ago
PS3 dev kit was my first console dev experience, pretty late in the cycle so the dev kit looked like a beefy consumer model. We had one of the second gen ones in the office though. I miss really getting to know the machine and working with the spus, now that consoles are really just pcs it loses that special feeling of really taking advantage of the hardware - however that's just nostalgia, I don't really want to go back to that, but I do have fond memories
- cubefox 3y ago
  It is ironic that modern consoles are so close to PCs now, but PC games were much more popular back then. Nowadays there are hardly any big PC exclusives anymore, and many console ports are lousy, despite the extremely similar hardware. I guess much fewer people own PCs nowadays.
  - Quikinterp 3y ago
    There are lots of PC exclusive games that are immensely popular, and I'd argue some of the most popular games in the world. csgo, valorant, league of legends, etc. I think the reason why you won't see any big exclusives on PC is that because consoles are close to PCs, big games should be ported to console otherwise you're missing out on huge markets. Beyond the live service type games I mentioned earlier, there's also a ton of smaller indie-AA type titles that are PC exclusive. Even that is dwindling down though since porting gets easier and easier for indie devs
    - cubefox 3y ago
      > I think the reason why you won't see any big exclusives on PC is that because consoles are close to PCs, big games should be ported to console otherwise you're missing out on huge markets. Yeah, but today it is mostly the other way round: Big console games get ported to PC. Exceptions like Cyberpunk 2077 (which was a PC-first development) are increasingly rare. Smaller games are another matter.
- maccard 3y ago
  There's still plenty to learn about and deep dive into, even with the current batch of consoles. The most obvious difference that is openly available to talk about is unified memory. Sure it exists on some PC platforms, but you can't rely on it being there.

colejohnson66 3y ago

Can anyone explain why dev kits are always so much larger than the release product? I get that some shrinking may occur after the dev kit is released (board revisions) and that (possibly) the kits need to support more things inside, but they always seem comically large. For another example, the Nintendo DS (Nitro) dev kit, for example, is also a relatively massive box, but with a full on DS still hanging off the side of it.

ralusek 3y ago
I assume because they need to get in and out, swap things easily, and that making it all fit is probably one of the later concerns.
fredoralive 3y ago
Beyond just having more stuff inside, making something small and stylish costs more in time and money, so dev tools tend to be more functional as they aren’t a mass market product.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  You can amortize that cost by just reusing what work you already are doing for making the actual device.
  - georgemcbay 3y ago
    Dev kits for game consoles typically started shipping well before the actual device hardware did to give external developers enough time to create launch games. It wasn't uncommon for the dev kits to go out a year or more before the console shipped to retail. This is particularly true in the era before consoles were basically just locked down x86 PCs and thus developers needed access to a variant of the actual hardware to port their games/engines.
    - charcircuit 3y ago
      That doesn't contradict with my point. There are also logistic advantages in making the device small.

seabass-labrax 3y ago

A second-hand PS1 demo disk that I acquired had an advert for Net Yaroze, along with a little game made using the kit; as someone who had just started programming at this point, it was an exciting concept. I was rather disappointed to discover that they were no longer even sold by that time! Nowadays, I have rather mixed feelings about dev-kits: on one hand, having dedicated debugging hardware is fun, but since truly cross-platform game engines became a reality in the 2010s, these machines have little purpose except to facilitate gatekeeping on the part of console manufacturers. Writing a little OpenGL, Vulkan or now WebGL and compiling with open source compilers for a variety of platforms seems infinitely more practical than signing secret contracts with officious console publishers.

mikepurvis 3y ago
To be fair, a big part of those cross platform engines becoming a reality was the other platform owners following Microsoft and standardizing console hardware on PC architecture. It wouldn't really have been practical to do that kind of thing in the PS2/GameCube era when you had them still inventing their own 3D pipelines and trying to differentiate on that.
capableweb 3y ago
If you want your game to end up on a PlayStation or Switch, you'll still need to link/integrate their closed-sourced SDKs, so we're close to the "everything is built with open source compilers" but not quite there yet.
Uvix 3y ago
Microsoft allows Xbox One/Series owners to enable Dev Mode on their consoles and run their own adhoc software on them. No secret contract allowed until you want to start selling your game.
- psychphysic 3y ago
  And up until recently you might even be able to run a closed beta and have people access your game on retail mode! Or well some emulators could be.

pbiggar 3y ago

I worked with one of these. I did an internship at SCEE in 2003 to port the Eyetoy camera driver to Linux to work with ps2linux. Sadly, it was nerfed by legal right after we released it as GPL. I fixed it up to keep the proprietary stuff in a separate kernel module, but alas I was gone at that point and it never got past legal afaik.

hammyhavoc 3y ago
You were a dude after my own heart. I had two EyeToy cams from buying EyeToy Play 1 and 2, and obviously only needed one on the console, spent many hours trying to get it working on Linux, which was surprisingly difficult, whereas it worked on Windows with ease. Those were the days huh! I had the PS2 Linux kit too, loved tinkering with that.

aappleby 3y ago

Ah yes, the TOOL. I did not have to deal with that thing directly, but the rest of the team hated them.

gumby 3y ago

I remember those EB machines. I only ever saw a single one, in Japan, and never used it. We actually started working on the PS 2 before there was any hardware at all (even the Toshiba CPU had not been finished) and wrote the simulator so development could start before the hardware was available. Oddly enough the first time I ever clapped eyes on a production PS 2 was at Fry’s, and it was a slimline (2nd gen) so that would have been five or six years after launch. We were also working on the Dreamcast at the same time, but less deeply. Obviously there was no direct overlap. Luckily I never ended up visiting both companies the same day.

aap_ 3y ago
That's really interesting. Was the emulator called SKY by any chance? And do you know if it survived in any way? As a PS2 fan I'd so much love to see it.
- gumby 3y ago
  I don’t remember that name. Part of it (a plug in for the emotion engine) might never have been available outside SCEI, I don’t know. The main part (CPU and memory emulator) we wrote was released as open source and for all I know may even survive today for modern processors.

h0l0cube 3y ago

> The upgraded model DTL-15000 with the Performance Analyzer is especially rare and was a more expensive unit so developers tended to only have a couple and used them for debugging performance issues with their games. I had a chance to work with one of these. It was amazing to get a non-intrusive profile that provided cycle-level data of all the chips in the Emotion Engine, as well as memory access and DMA state. The real take-away was how much more important memory access was to compute. Memory locality, cache preloading, and predictable control flow had a huge bearing on performance, and that's true more broadly for high-throughput DSP-style workloads including that in high-performance gaming.