Though I've never played a video game on any of the major gaming platforms, I recently purchased a Sony PlayStation 3. Part of the reason I did this was an article I read in IEEE Spectrum magazine last year detailing the phenomenal engineering that went into this platform and the rest of the reason was to tease my 9-year old nephew who's a big time gamer, but doesn't have a PS3. The article in Spectrum, entitled "Expressway to Your Skull," described the interconnections between the PS3's Cell processor, graphics chip and memory (CLICK HERE for the article).

I had a hard time justifying to my wife why I was spending $600 for a game machine. I remember mumbling something to her about the machine's Blu-ray DVD player. But in my mind, I felt like, hey, I'm buying a computer with a Cell processor for only $600. The real revelation for me was at the Embedded Systems Conference in April. I was poking around the Power.org exhibit, and I spied a PS3 with a keyboard and mouse. What the heck? I didn't realize until then that the Linux community was using the PS3 as a personal computer as well as a game machine. Wow! It was running Yellow Dog Linux, so I picked up a free copy of the OS. Later that day, I spoke with Bill Wong, Electronic Design's embedded systems guru, and he was way ahead of me. He even suggested I use a Linux variant call Ebuntu, which I had never heard of. Bill assured me that this was a better choice than Yellow Dog Linux, though I can't remember the exact reason.

Though I'm sure Bill's advice is right on the mark, I have the Yellow Dog Linux CD in my hand, so I've decided to go with that OS. In trying to figure out the best place to start, I am focusing on peripherals. What monitor do I need, what keyboard, which mouse. As you can see, I'm not that eager to take on Linux. Especially since Chris Ng from IBM’s Microelectronics Division, who was in the Power.org booth, warned me that Linux is not going to be as easy to install as Windows. He also showed me how he switched out the 60 MB hard disk that comes with the $600 version of the PS3 for a 120 MB disk. It looked easy enough, but I don't want to introduce further complications into the project.

In trying to find the right monitor, I settled on the Gateway 19" HD Wide-Screen LCD monitor. At $229, it's within my budget, but the main reason is that this monitor has a DVI-D connector, which supports HDCP, a form of digital rights management. If a monitor doesn't have this feature, you can't play Blu-ray DVDs. And this is, of course, one of the reasons I purchased the PS3.

As for the keyboard, I have plenty around the house, but none that work though the USB port. I went to a CompUSA going out of business sale, and they had a pallet full of Microsoft keyboards for $2 each, but none of those featured a USB connection either. I guess I could just get a PS/2-to-USB adapter for the keyboard, but I'm really leaning towards a wireless keyboard--with a Linux driver, of course.

I thought I would have more nitty gritty details by now on my experience installing Yellow Dog Linux, but as you can see, I'm working very deliberately on this project (procrastinating?). More to come.