The successor to the PlayStation, from Sony.

The original PlayStation came in quite a large form factor originally. It was rebranded as the PSOne in a much smaller footprint later. (The PS2 is 301 x 78 x 182 mm (w × h × d) and weighs 2.4 kg.)

The PS2 can play games (including the titles for the original PlayStation, as well as OOTB online gaming), but also CDs and DVDs. It supports DolbyDigital, AC-3 and DTS. There are USB, FireWire and PCMCIA ports.

The CPU is a 128-bit chip dubbed EmotionEngine, running at 295 MHz, which was specifically optimised for physics simulation and achieves twice as many FloatingPoint operations/sec as a 700 MHz Pentium Ⅲ. It has access to 32 MB of RDRAM as well as miscellaneous other processors for graphics, sound, I/O etc.

See also:

• Linux for the PlayStation2
• The official NZ PlayStation

Part of CategoryHardware