Don't start on a PS3, your going to brick it. And bricking a $200+ console that is extremely useful is not good. IDK about you, but I don't have that kinda money.
You
really need the basics before hand. If you want to do high-end stuff you will be mostly working with ARM processors. C is what you need not C++. Embedded C is diff from regular C.
You will need a dev board or platform. I am using a BeagleBoard. There are other options, like GumStix, RaspberryPie, 32bit Arduino, ect... General boards found
here (read the comments too).
Resources:
HaD- Great for what has been done and what is going on currently. Read the comments on posts too. There are ALOT of great professional people giving great advice and opinions on here. They even ran a tutorials and shit. Really, I check this site everyday when I wake up and go to bed.
Embedded C- Explains what and why embedded C is diff from regular OS dev of C.
Lady Ada- adafruit is your fucking friend. Buy your shit from them too, if you can. All open source, hacker owned, looking out for the community, I fucking love adafruit.
Good supplier- Digikey has pretty much everything. From resistors to optoisolators. More importantly, they have datasheets.
Datasheets- This one doesn't have a link because it depends on what processor your deving for. After you pick a processor/devboard to work with you need the datasheet to the processor. Example,
here is the one for the BeagalBoard I'm working with. There is a lot of technical shit with it too. Like PinMuxing, VDD, Duty Cycle/Clock Jittering, NAND constraints, ect....
All in all, the things you want to do take years of poking around. You would be better spent learning how shit is set up and how it actually works on the electron level
Extras:
http://hackaday.com/2010/12/24/reading-nand-flash-chips-without-removing-them/http://hackaday.com/2012/01/05/reading-nand-flash-with-an-arduino/http://hackaday.com/2012/09/20/reading-bare-nand-flash-chips-with-a-microcontroller/http://hackaday.com/2012/12/03/odroid-u2-is-latest-barebones-board-begging-to-be-used/http://hackaday.com/2012/11/13/cornell-ece-4760-lecture-videos-now-online/ ----------
----------------(watch them all)
Good shit:
http://hackaday.com/2012/11/01/how-computers-work-starting-with-transistor-gates/Yes all from Had. HaD is your friend.
Sorry to butt in a bit skidiot.h:
The links and stuff you provided where great, OP
REALLY needs to learn syntax and all and what you posted he needs to look into to know how to code for shit, but embedded stuff is a bit diff. OP needs to look over what you provided, but also needs more to know what I posted. It isn't really about learning C and stuff, if he plans to learn/do what he wants, firmware and all;it takes knowing what to work with, constraints, memory management, what the mcu can handle, clock rates, muxing, nand management/even flashing nand, etc... Hell, I can bet OP can even find the ISP headers on the PS3 board, let alone a "powered" toothbrush to flash firmware that runs a PIC mcu.
