ucLinux Port to the PSP

**DustinFraze** · April 8th, 2006, 15:52

Originally Posted by StealthCP

It does look pretty cool, however, I have reason to suspect it's fake. I hope I'm wrong, but it looks like a console print program to me. Forgive me if I'm wrong.

1. When loading it from PSP iR Shell, it has the exact same amount of free memory (21512k) as if it were booted from the XMB menu.
2. It supports sleep mode, even whilst it is loading ramdisk.
3. It takes the exact same time, all the time to arrive at the Kernel Panic, at which point the PSP should have stalled, and not function with the shutdown code.
4. When uncompressing the kernel, it does not access the memory stick. In total, only one flick of the memory stick access LED is seen upon startup.
5. When using a process monitor, it is using virtually no resources at all, and has very little output.

As I said before, I hope I'm wrong, as a large group of my school's PSP club are Linux users, and they are eagerly awaiting a usable version of the kernel.

I hadn't got a chance to run it before last night. I gave it a run, and now I agree with you, though for different reasons. Most of the reasons you provided could be explained away by saying that the Linux kernel is replacing the PSP kernel, and as such, it takes over those functions.

The most damning thing, to me, is that Tux is rendered in the corner before memory checks or anything else. Now, this *could* be a ucLinux difference (*very very doubtful*), but normal Linux kernels don't display Tux in the corner until after the framebuffer is initialized.

However, I'll give that this person was clever. psp-strings doesn't show any of the strings displayed on the screen. It's very possible that something is compressed in here.

As for why this was done as a joke, I'm not too sure, but perhaps the "release date" was April 1st, and psp-news picked up on it a bit late, due to the recent down time.

EDIT:
Also, add in to the doubt that the audio buttons still work. I turned the volume all the way up, booted "Linux", and pressed the volume buttons several times. Then, rebooted. No volume. Some piece of software is in place, adjusting mixer levels. However, this is before the point in the kernel where the mixers are loaded (and there is no mention of the audio driver in the dmesg).

I guess that also makes me right about this never running X...