Support NeoGAF

[adamsapple]

Posting this as a question here, hoping someone with more knowledge can help me out.

I'm currently visiting my family home in the old-country and have unearthed my childhood modded slim PS2, which has been in cold storage for about 2+ decades now. Gonna take it back with me to get it refurbished and its lens serviced/replaced. My question is, what are the best soft-mods for increasing PS2 longevity at the moment.

Preferably any solution that does not involve opening the shell or soldering stuff on it. This is a Slim PS2, not a Phat one, so any HDD Bay related modding is out of the question. Are there any decent plug and play style solutions to get a USB, SD Card or something working on it? Any good recommendations will be appreciated.

 

[polybius80]

freemcboot, you dont really need the lens to be replaced or anymore

you basically only require a memory card modified with freemcboot in the slot 1, the memory card can stilll have space left for some saves or other apps, but you can have apps and games in a usb flash drive(you also can move data between memory cards and usb drive)

there is a small problem and is that some games may not work 100% correctly because usb speed, there are modded memory cards to connect sd cards supposedly is faster than usb but have not tested myself, usb speed is mostly a problem when playing some videos but will not be always a problem, you also get extra software for scaling games for "modern" lcd screens making it look better than composite or even regular component, component cables can be made very easily because the video port already give you RGB so you can for example take old RF adapters(the usually have all the pins for some reason even if not connected) and solder directly the RGB, composite video and audio cables, you can also play games over lan so you can basically store games in a PC but play in you PS2, or even play movies

 

[adamsapple]

freemcboot, you dont really need the lens to be replaced

you basically only require a memory card modified with freemcboot in the slot 1, the memory card can stilll have space left for some saves or other apps, but you can have apps and games in a usb flash drive

Is the PS2's USB fast(er) than the DVD read speed? If I'm not mistaken, these were ancient USB 1.1 standard ports

 

[kevboard]

freemcboot, you dont really need the lens to be replaced

you basically only require a memory card modified with freemcboot in the slot 1, the memory card can stilll have space left for some saves or other apps, but you can have apps and games in a usb flash drive

over USB you will run into FMV stutter and some long loading times however.

it's the plug&play way, but also the least robust one.

 

[adamsapple]

freemcboot, you dont really need the lens to be replaced

you basically only require a memory card modified with freemcboot in the slot 1, the memory card can stilll have space left for some saves or other apps, but you can have apps and games in a usb flash drive

over USB you will run into FMV stutter and some long loading times however.

it's the plug&play way, but also the least robust one.

Are either of you guys familiar with this? Found this on youtube and seems like a very interesting thing at a glance.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

 

[adamsapple]

oh yeah, that looks like the thing I posted just one post above.

Definitely getting one of these as soon as I can. Fascinating stuff to be able to load an SD card using the magic gate memory card slot.

 

[kevboard]

Are either of you guys familiar with this? Found this on youtube and seems like a very interesting thing at a glance.

I only ever used a modded slim with burned discs before,
and a friend of mine bought a pre-modded fat with an HDD.

those are the only 2 modded PS2 setups I am really familiar with sadly.
and before he got that fat with the hdd, he did load games from USB, also on a slim, and that was slow.

 

[near]

It's probably not exactly what you're looking for, but I softmodded my Japanese PS2 with MechaPwn and it's completely region free now. I think it can play back-ups but I've never tested it.

 

[Bark]

Are either of you guys familiar with this? Found this on youtube and seems like a very interesting thing at a glance.

That is actually pretty cool.
I have a fat ps2 with a 500gb harddrive and most of my games on it.
Also, look up which Slim model you have, cause freemcboot doesn't work on the last gen slims.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Slim PS2's require you to use a USB hard drive as there isn't an internal drive bay anymore like on the Phat PS2's and so the Network Adapter method won't work;

No matter how you do it, any kind of hard drive is much faster than loading off the disc and it also saves wear and tear on the disc motor

 

[kevboard]

That is actually pretty cool.
I have a fat ps2 with a 500gb harddrive and most of my games on it.
Also, look up which Slim model you have, cause freemcboot doesn't work on the last gen slims.

it doesn't work on later super slim models, but works on all the normal slim models afaik.

 

[adamsapple]

That is actually pretty cool.
I have a fat ps2 with a 500gb harddrive and most of my games on it.
Also, look up which Slim model you have, cause freemcboot doesn't work on the last gen slims.

it doesn't work on later super slim models, but works on all the normal slim models afaik.

I'm in luck, this seems to be a 7000 series model.

 

[kevboard]

I'm in luck, this seems to be a 7000 series model.

I mean yeah, as long as you have the normal slim (the one with the glossy line in the middle and external power brick) you're fine.

only the super slim models (90000) don't all work. those have an internal power supply, are a tiny bit smaller, are flat in the front where the buttons are, and don't have that glossy line in the middle anymore.

 

[adamsapple]

Alright, I'm compiling some stuff here, this hopefully helps other people too.


1. 8Bitdo adapter to connect Xbox/PS4/PS5 controllers to your PS2 wirelessly
2. Kaiko's easy plug and play PS2 to HDMI adpater - this one connects to the component out so it has better quality than composite cables
3. Kaiko's SD to PS2 which comes pre-installed with Free McBoot etc, there are probably many cheaper solutions, this is just something ready to plug and play.

 

[Instant_Classic]

GOAT'd console

 

[polybius80]

Is the PS2's USB fast(er) than the DVD read speed? If I'm not mistaken, these were ancient USB 1.1 standard ports

over USB you will run into FMV stutter and some long loading times however.

it's the plug&play way, but also the least robust one.

DVD is faster AFAIK, but in gameplay I rarely found problems with loading times or notice if they were longer, I used to play a lot using usb I think 15 years ago, my theory is that USB has no seek times and that gives its own advantages, so DVD will work better for continuous big chunks of data like videos, but seeking files is USB advantage because it doesnt move a laser, I tested a couple years ago area 51 and that game realy in streaming data found no problem, there is also the problem with DL DVD games, their isos cannot be inside a FAT32 USB because exceed the file size of that format, that is another problem, I remember there was a page that mentiones how good or if incompatible each game works depending if you play frm USB, HDD(fat models) and Network