Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] PS3 USB chipset

[Eric Blossom]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 05:31:21PM +0200, Vincenzo Pellegrini wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> I'm planning to begin to learn and explore the fantastic territories of
> parallel computing applied to software radio that Eric is currently opening
> to us through his work on the Cell BE platform.
> (just by the way, thanks Eric!)

You're welcome.

> Therefore, I will save some money to buy a PS 3 :-)
> I know It's not gonna be a easy way to go, but such a computational power is
> simply an incredible dream.. :-)
> 
> So, my question: has anybody yet tested the outwards (host to USRP)
> throughput of the PS3 usb chipset?
> Is it able to cope with our fatal 32MB/s ?

It'll do 32MB/s inbound, however the fastest I've been able to get
outbound is 25.6MB/s (-i 20).

I just tested on a PS3 running Fedora 8 with a 2.6.25.9-40.fc8 kernel.
The PS3 firmware was updated about a month ago.

> Thanks
> Vincenzo
> 
> PS.
> Is anybody using an adapter to connect the PS3 video output to a standard
> VGA monitor?

I tried pretty much all the tricks, and after finding none of them
satisfactory, bought a low cost HDMI compatible monitor.  
FWIW, I bought a BENQ FP222W.

I tried:

 (1) HDMI to DVI cable.  Doesn't work, PS3 requires HDCP DRM cruft

 (2) Composite video into flat panel (the yellow RCA connector): barely
     readable enough to get it to boot.

 (3) Gadget that converted component output to VGA: barely readable,
     didn't support the 480i mode that it booted up in, thus had to
     change between kludge (2) and kludge (3) on the fly by plugging and
     unplugging cables.

 (4) Finally spend about $250 to buy an HDMI monitor.
 

Eric