PS2 Harddrive mod?

[Anima6six6]

I'm interested in modding my PS2 in order to run games directly from my harddrive but I can't seem to find any guides on how to actually do it. Can any of you guys help me out? I have a silver slim PS2.

[Jazzmarazz]

You want to play games on your PS2 from your computer?
This cannot be done afaik...

If it were a FAT PS2, then we could talk. unfortunately, the USB slots on PS2s are only USB1.0, so they are very slow.

[Anima6six6]

No no I mean playing PS2 games from a harddrive on my PS2. Like the Wii Harddrive mod you know?

[Colamisu]

He wants to figure out how to use USBLoader or HDLoader with the PS2. I think we have a guide around for it somewhere (check the "Sony System Guides" sticky in this forum). Unfortunately, I have no experience with it. But I don't think you can use an IDE/SATA HDD with a slim, so it would have to be USB.

[Anima6six6]

I actually was planning on using a USB HDD

[Jazzmarazz]

Like I said above, the USB slots are USB 1.0, so they cannot keep up with the speed a game needs to read at.
Your best option is to load games from burned disc since you have the slim model, but either way, you will want to install free mcboot onto your memory card. With that you would have installed the necessary programs to load from USB, HDD, and DVD. THe HDD prog will not work since the slim PS2 has no HDD port though.

[Anima6six6]

Darn. Well is there a guide that explains exactly what I need to do to mod my console to play burned games? & also do you guys know of any shops of were I can buy the fliptop cover and swapmagic? I can't seem to find any... Even been ripped off once

[Jazzmarazz]

I linked you to the tutorial in my last post, and no, idk where to get a flip top cover.
You will only need it once while you are installing Free mcboot though. The rest of the time you simply put the disc in the tray like an ordinary game.
If you want to use the Slim model to install FMB, you have to bloc 3 sensors (could be 4). This can be done with the top off though.

IF its too much trouble, you can have someone install FMB for you, here.

[Colamisu]

I linked you to the tutorial in my last post, and no, idk where to get a flip top cover.
You will only need it once while you are installing Free mcboot though. The rest of the time you simply put the disc in the tray like an ordinary game.
If you want to use the Slim model to install FMB, you have to bloc 3 sensors (could be 4). This can be done with the top off though.

IF its too much trouble, you can have someone install FMB for you, here.

A small correction, it's 2 sensors, possible 3. Newer slims only need to have sensor A (front right of the disc tray) and sensor B (the disk brake) blocked. Older ones also need a sensor inside the main body blocked.

But yeah, if you don't mind the wait and the shipping charges, having someone else install for you is the easiest way to do anything. Although, you don't really need the flip top to install FMCB in most cases anyways. Swapmagic can boot ELF files from a USB if you lay everything out properly.

[Anima6six6]

Thanks for all the help. I'm going to attempt to the the 007 switch trick in a few days/weeks so hopefully it works!

[Zorlon]

either that or have someone else do it for you from there already modded PS2

I could do it for you

By the way you only need to temp cover the lid censors, crack the ps2 slim apart tape the front censor down, the back one is a little more arkward to do, maybe a bit of card jammed in there will do or manually hold it, you are best doing that a none manual way though

Once the mod is installed you can play ESR patched games just like orginals so no need for a flip lid or the censors to be held down infact that would cause issues for multi disc games

If you used the original DVD SwapMagic to install you do not need to block lid censors at all it can run the elf install files from a usb stick

There are other methods aswell that do not require any hardware mods, off hand I think the Xploder methods also requires no hardware mod or censors blocking, this is because of the file manager it has

Personly when I modded my own I already owned a SwapMagic 3.X [forgot the exact version but it was the first version to be able to run elf files from USB] disc set so I used that

Once you have ESR/MCBOOT installed you can them make more PS2 ESR/MCBOOT memcards for your friends ect without going through as much hassle

[Inferno.]

PS2 Open Loader has much better compatibility than USBAdvance etc. If you're going the USB route. I think it's something like 40% compatibility compared to 30%.

[Zorlon]

More like 10% and 15% if it's even that high, it would also denpend on the USB drive aswell, alot will not even work with the USB loaders

You sure it's not like 40 Games working compared to 30 Games in total I don't remember any compat list with anything near 30% working

Unless you have a USB dirve already and have it working then sure have a play round with the USB loader, I wouldn't bother buying a USB drive just for this, well not all USB drives will work, even when a game does work it's slow, very slow loading, if you are lucky the game will not lag itself, but any game that has data access during play will lag constantly, thats if they even boot corectly USB 1.00 is just not fast enough for this to be usuable at a playable state in general, some games do work without ingame lag but take an age to load in the first place.