this is a short writeup of my notes from tinkering with the old netbsd for playstation 2, which i never succeeded in getting to work, but the resources i found seem extremely rare at this point, so here i am writing this up now.
see my ps2-netbsd.tzst file for an archive of the only compiled snapshots i was able to find, courtesy an old japanese bsd users group that i don't recall the name of.. (someone do let me know what it was) SHA1SUM:
334052b671f21c921d478c37915d1ff502e203d5
also browse the directory tree here. as you can see, i only have 2 snapshots, 1.5ZC (20020327) and 1.6A (20020526). i'm sure that others at one time existed, but i could not find them
see the kernelloader project for some info on booting an OS.. one needs a screen with sync-on-green, and a VGA cable, since netbsd only supports SVGA for video output. i'm not sure if this is an inherent netbsd quirk, or a limitation of this loader, but either way i would like to see a freshly written loader, this one i found to be overly complex to use
there is also an alternate boot loader called redboot, which i have not tested myself, but it is maybe better for starting netbsd:
in new developments since my time exploring in 2020, seemingly there is code and packages on the netbsd servers, so perhaps netbsd 9 is working?:
https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/src/sys/arch/playstation2/
https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/playstation2/
given the existence of the freedvdboot exploit, the dream is for a netbsd livecd to be created, similar to what can be done for the dreamcast. if netbsd 9 indeed works, this will make it a much better system than the now very ancient ps2 linux systems