I had been considering upgrading my 60 GB PS3’s hard drive for a while. When I saw the Hitachi Travelstar 2-in1 Notebook PC Upgrade Kit in Best Buy I simply couldn’t resist. They have included a fast 200GB 7200 RPM 2.5″ SATA drive plus a USB 2.0 enclosure for your existing drive for $169.99. What sold me on it was the enclosure for using my existing drive, too, but the flashy packaging certainly didn’t hurt. The fastest notebook drive available. Rated best in application performance in PCMark testing. Up to 33% faster than 5400RPM drives. “Do I really need this right now?” Satisfy your need for speed. Low noise, vibration and heat emission. 16 MB Data Buffer. “Hmm… OK, I’ll take it!” Those clever marketing people know me too well.
So now I have a 200 GB Playstation 3 and a 60 GB USB 2.0 drive for extra storage and backups. Installation was simple — there are plenty of sites showing how to upgrade your PS3’s hard drive so I won’t go into it here. Of course I had to back up my existing Game OS and Linux data first and restore it after installing/formatting the new drive. I already had an old 40 GB USB drive to use for backups so I used that.
I still kept my Other OS allotment to 10GB, planning to use my network and the 60 GB USB drive for additional storage. When reinstalling Yellow Dog 6, the installer picked up on the new 60 GB USB drive (my old PS3 hard drive) and offered to partition it for me. I left it as empty space and later formatted it as FAT32 so both Linux and the Game OS could use it.
As seen here, my old hard drive was a bit dusty when I removed it. My Playstation 3 has been running almost constantly for the past year or so.
The original 60 GB PS3 hard drive all cleaned up and sitting in the new USB enclosure. Using another USB cable for separate power is optional — I just have mine powered by the one USB cable connected to the PS3.
For some idea of the speed relative to the original drive, I ran some very simple tests before and after replacing the drive. Here are the results (edited for readability):
The original 60GB 5400 RPM drive:
hdparm -tT /dev/ps3da
Timing buffered disk reads: 24.71 MB/sec (average of three results)
The new 200GB 7200 RPM drive:
hdparm -tT /dev/ps3da
Timing buffered disk reads: 36.60 MB/sec (average of three results)
That’s 11.89 MB/sec faster than the old drive — about 32% faster!
Copying a 500 MB file:
The original 60GB 5400 RPM drive:
[bill@localhost ~]$ time cp system7.hfv test.file
real 0m44.370s
user 0m0.104s
sys 0m9.244s
The new 200GB 7200 RPM drive:
[bill@localhost ~]$ time cp system7.hfv test.file
real 0m31.725s
user 0m0.115s
sys 0m9.529s
12.6 seconds better than the old drive — about 28% faster!
So it looks like the claims on the box were true, for once. I realize these are rather simple tests, but it appears I may get around 30% better performance with the new 7200 RPM drive. Since that’s where my swap partition is located it should help improve performance a little in that area, too.
Comparing the speed of the old 60GB drive in the USB 2.0 enclosure, hdparm shows an average of around 20 MB/sec — not bad, either.
So far I’m very happy with this upgrade!
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March 22, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Mattek
Do you think XP would run smooth on the PS3?
Have you had ANY luck at all with diablo2 running on the PS3? - Could it be the OS you used?
March 24, 2009 at 7:36 am
billb
XP will definitely run slower than previous versions of Windows on the PS3 (via QEMU).
Due to the higher memory requirements of XP, I don’t think it would help for Diablo 2. With the PS3’s PPE core having to emulate a full x86 machine I think it’s just not going to be fast enough no matter how you do it.
March 26, 2009 at 5:58 am
Joe Cupertino
I got the Java plugin working for firefox but what I want to do is to be able to run Java apps from the YDL 6.1 desktop.
April 2, 2009 at 2:37 am
PiolloTorm
Hello billb:
Sorry for my poor english, but i don’t control your Lenguage.
My Nickname is Piollotorm and I’ve use your install guide to compile SDLMame that you posted in http://pleasantfiction.ipower.com/bodega/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=sdl+mame#p28. It’s very good.
I’ve translate (freely) to spanish by petition of one user forum (www.elotrolado.net). I´m a simply user.
I tell you if you don’t want to make it public and you want i erase it.
A lot of thanks.
April 10, 2009 at 10:30 am
BAS
Hey bill, I am having some issues. Now I am pretty much a noob to YDL in general, but here is the issue I am having. I went to do this sudo revisited stuff, and it kept saying sudoers was a read only file and wouldn’t let me change it or anything, even in root. So I made a new file, copying all the content of the original, then named it sudoers, and erased the old one (probably a stupid move lol) but now I get this error when I try to enter sudo, it says “sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0644, should be 0440″ and it doesn’t allow me to enter sudo. Is there a way to fix this? or am I screwed? Again, I’m new to this stuff so all help you can afford would be appreciated! Thanks!
-BAS
April 12, 2009 at 12:15 pm
billb
I need to update that guide including the step to make the sudoers file writable. You can fix the issue you’re having with (I’m assuming you’ve already edited the file and made the change):
su -
chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers
exit
April 18, 2009 at 12:18 pm
morgan
Any chance you could attempt to run Grim Fandango using this method? Running that would be my only real reason for going through this process and I don’t want to bother if it won’t work. Thanks.
April 26, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Mick711
Hello
On the original Cloanto files af_boot.uaerc you have :
# E-UAE configuration file
# General options
unix.rom_path=/cdrom/Amiga Files/System/rom
unix.floppy_path=
use_gui=false
use_debugger=false
# Host CPU-specific options
x86.use_tsc=true
# CPU emulation options
cpu_type=68020/68881
cpu_speed=max
cpu_compatible=false
cpu_cycle_exact=false
# JIT compiler options
cachesize=16384
compfpu=true
# Chipset options
chipset=ecs_agnus
ntsc=false
immediate_blits=true
collision_level=none
# ROM options
kickstart_rom_file=$(FILE_PATH)/amiga-os-3×0.rom
kickstart_key_file=$(FILE_PATH)/rom.key
kickshifter=false
# RAM options
chipmem_size=4
bogomem_size=0
fastmem_size=8
z3mem_size=0
gfxcard_size=8
# Floppy drive options
floppy0=
floppy0type=0
floppy1=
floppy1type=0
floppy2=
floppy2type=0
floppy3=
floppy3type=0
nr_floppies=4
floppy_speed=100
# Hard disk options
filesystem2=rw,DH0:System:/cdrom/Amiga Files/System/dir/System,1
filesystem2=rw,DH1:Work:/cdrom/Amiga Files/System/dir/Work,0
# Display options
gfx_framerate=1
gfx_width_windowed=800
gfx_height_windowed=600
gfx_width_fullscreen=800
gfx_height_fullscreen=600
gfx_fullscreen_amiga=true
gfx_lores=false
gfx_linemode=double
gfx_correct_aspect=false
gfx_center_horizontal=none
gfx_center_vertical=none
show_leds=false
# Sound options
sound_output=normal
sound_bits=16
sound_frequency=44100
sound_channels=stereo
sound_interpol=none
# Input device options
joyport0=mouse
joyport1=kbd1
# SCSI emulation options
scsi=true
scsi_device=/dev/cdrom
# Network emulation
bsdsocket_emu=true
# X11-specific options
x11.map_raw_keys=false
x11.low_bandwidth=false
x11.use_mitshm=true
What difference is necessary for run on Linux on PS3 ?
April 30, 2009 at 5:53 am
billb
@morgan — I’ll give that a try. Also it appears there’s a sub-project of scummvm that is in the works (http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/residual/index.php?title=Main_Page) but I haven’t tried it.
April 30, 2009 at 5:56 am
billb
@Mick711 — my .uaerc file is shown in this post: http://blogs.ydl.net/billb/2008/03/02/amiga-os-3x-on-the-ps3/
May 18, 2009 at 4:27 pm
justfreakinwayne
Hey Billb , I’ve been using ydl for about a year. Still no good at running outside gui. Since 6.1 I can’t find any p2p programs that work. Will never get Usenext on this thing due to the mono issue., but do you know of anything?
May 25, 2009 at 6:36 am
billb
I use deluge:
http://pleasantfiction.ipower.com/ps3linux/ps3bodega61/ppc/repodata/repoview/deluge-0-0.5.8.6-2.ydl6.bdg.html
After setting up repo:
http://pleasantfiction.ipower.com/bodega/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=21
Then just:
yum install deluge
The version I have in the repo is a bit old, but it works for me.
May 26, 2009 at 9:22 am
Arakageeta
billb, do you know if anyone tried compiling snes9x with IBM’s Cell xlc compiler (aka Octopiler)? I am curious to see if the emulator can be enhanced with xlc’s automated SPE offloading.
I was thinking of taking a shot at this myself, but I wanted to check here first.
May 27, 2009 at 9:32 am
billb
Sorry, I don’t know of anyone who has attempted that.
June 27, 2009 at 8:06 am
John Murray
Hey billb. I’ve installed YDL 6.1 on my PS3 and then updated it with as much stuff as I can get my hands on (via yum). I’ve also installed the port of VLC and I’m able to play movies and mp3 fils quite sucessfully. What I am having a problem with is sound (and video) in Firefox. At this point I’m unsure what to do–I’ve had a look at the the available plug-ins, but none of them, seems to have anything to do with sound. Any ideas what I can do to get this part working?
July 18, 2009 at 11:13 pm
ynah2q3
You know what that means - pumpkin guts. They’re gooey, they smell a bit funny, and they’re an easy way to quadruple the weight of your garbage can.
Stickiness aside, what CAN you do with pumpkin guts?
July 18, 2009 at 11:15 pm
ynah2q3
I’m due to inherit shortly a PowerPC based Mac (well at least I think it is as I’m sure it’s over a year old) and I was wondering what my hope of running games on it might be.
I would idealy like to run Ubuntu on it as I like it as an OS. It looks like I wont be able to run games using Wine, are there any other options?
July 18, 2009 at 11:17 pm
ynah2q3
Yes that’s exactly how you would do it. However most software has been written to make use of the environment variables so that files can be stored in the users home folder such as save games etc. If you go to the terminal and type set you can see the entire list of environment variables for the current user.
August 9, 2009 at 11:12 am
Dann
Have you got the fluendo mp3 codec installed? that should get sound working in firefox but videos (youtube etc im guessing follow the sfwdec tut on http://www.yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3712&start=120&st=0&sk=t&sd=a, sorry if this isnt allowed on forum rules but im new to ydl net :-/
September 11, 2009 at 2:38 am
knicknak
Do certain emulators work better than others for various systems?
i.e. For Genesis, does XE work better than sdlmess? For 2600 does stella work better than sdlmess (not listed but I saw in a post that it does work)? Does the order the emulator is listed (when multiple emulators are listed) indicate a preference?
Basically is there a way to tell which emulator is the best to use for each system on the PS3?
PS: I couldn’t type in the anti-spam word on Chrome, it wont let me type in that box (it goes back to the website box).
September 14, 2009 at 8:02 am
billb
@knicknak
Yes, XE works better for Genesis, and I’d prefer stella for Atari 2600 over sdlmess as well. Here’s a short list of what I’d use:
Amiga — e-uae
Apple II series — sdlmess
Atari 2600 — stella
C64 — vice
Coleco — sdlmess
Genesis — xe
NES, GB, GBC, GBA — mednafen
SNES — snes9x-gtk
October 30, 2009 at 12:14 pm
dislaire
can anybody try fallout 1 & 2 on qemu?because i really want to know if it works, specially fallout 2…
May 6, 2010 at 6:26 pm
mike
does anyone know where the config file .uaerc is saved when you install euae from the dribble repository ?
No matter what changes I make to the one .uaerc file in my home directory, it does not seem to have an effect, cant even change the resolution. Anyone knows if you can use hardfiles with euae as well ?
thanks for your help !