I just started messing around with development on my PS2. Compiled PS2DEV, PS2SDK and a few libraries like SDL and SDL_ttf for it. As it I found it a bit hard to find enough information to start, I thought I’d write my experiences down.

Part 1: Setting things up

Remember that running your own applications will only work, if your PS2 is “homebrew-capable”. This can be achieved with a mod chip, some disc swapping tool or by using an exploit. Google and Wikipedia know how to that.

PS2DEV is the crosscompiler toolchain for the PS2. You’ll need that for compiling C/C++ code for your PS2.

PS2SDK is a collection of libraries that make accessing the hardware of the PS2 a bit easier. The toolchain alone won’t let you do much without messing around with very lowlevel programming. SDL and other higher level libraries will need this.

Building the toolchain

With the following exports you decide, where the tools are installed. You should probably do this in your .profile or .bashrc or whatever you use to setup your environment.

export PS2DEV=/usr/local/ps2dev
export PS2SDK=$PS2DEV/ps2sdk
export PATH=$PATH:$PS2DEV/bin:$PS2DEV/ee/bin:$PS2DEV/iop/bin:$PS2DEV/dvp/bin:$PS2SDK/bin

Then you can check out the current source:

svn co svn://svn.ps2dev.org/ps2/trunk/ps2toolchain

Now you can build the toolchain and install it:

cd ps2toolchain
make
sudo -E make install

That’s it, it’s simple as that. Of course make will take some time, depending on your machine. This will also install a few additional tools, like ps2client, which I’ll explain later.

Building the SDK

It’s as easy as building the toolchain! Remember that you will have to have your environment variables correctly set.

svn co svn://svn.ps2dev.org/ps2/trunk/ps2sdk
cd ps2sdk
make
sudo -E make install

Now you’ve got the very basic toolset to develop for your PS2. However most beginners (like me) most likely want to develop on something more “sophisticated”. Fortunately SDL is available for the PS2. Read how to compile and install it in part 2.

Tags: Development, PS2

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 18:32 and is filed under Playstation 2 development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.