Okay, here's a really rough draft. I'll be cleaning this up over time and hoping for feedback on anything that's incorrect.
First off: I am very new to the scene and not terribly knowledgeable. The following steps are what has worked for me, but I can't guarantee this is the best way of doing it.
IMPORTANT WARNING: Do not connect or disconnect your hard drive from the Ps2 unless there is NO POWER in the Ps2. Connecting or disconnecting the hard drive or ethernet adapter while the Ps2 is on, or even in its sleep state (red light) could and will fry a very small fuse on the motherboard (Ps10) and prevent your Ps2 from using hard drives. I have done this. It is not fun to fix. You have been warned.
You will need:
- 2TB Sata internal hard drive (3.5 inch or 2.5 inch depending)
- Some way to connect this drive to an ethernet adapter
- A Ps2 ethernet adapter and Ps2 Phat (of course)
- Some way to connect the hard drive to a PC
- If you have a desktop computer, you can simply remove the side panel of your computer and connect the hard drive internally. Make sure to connect the power before the SATA line, and don't move the hard drive too much while it's spinning. Also, make sure to set it to 'Offline' in disk management before removing the hard drive, and remove the SATA line before the power.
- If you are using a laptop, you can find SATA to USB 3.0 adapters fairly cheaply online.
1) First, you need to format the hard drive. Winhiip will not work for this. You'll need to find some way of getting your ps2 to launch .elf files, which is pretty easy using FreeMcBoot. There are a lot of ways to get FreeMcBoot and I will not cover them here. Once you have FreeMcBoot running on the Ps2, run uLaunchElf 2TB edition:
http://www.psx-place.com/threads/ul...yte-edition-file-partition-hdd-manager.10605/
You can do this by downloading uLE 2TB onto a USB drive, then connecting it to the PS2, launching the embedded uLE that came with your FreeMcBoot, browsing to /mass, and then launching the uLE2TB elf.
Once in uLE 2TB, browse to /MISC and select the HDDManager. If everything is going well so far, you should see a note on the left side of the screen that a HDD is connected but not formatted. You can format the drive by hitting R1 and selecting format from the menu that appears. This should not take very long.
2) While we're in the HDD Manager, we should create some partitions. From the R1 menu we can create a partition named '+OPL', and make it exactly 2GB in size. Normally this would be done automatically the first time you run OPL, but OPL is unable to partition 2TB drives at time of writing this post.
2 optional) If you plan on using FreeHDDBoot (which I recommend, as it will save memory card space) you need to create another partition, named "PP.FMCB.APPS" and size 512KB (smallest possible). Once we've done this, we can run the FMcB installer elf found here:
http://ichiba.geocities.jp/ysai187/PS2/FMCB/
From the FMcB installer menu, tap R1 to go to the FHDB page and select 'uninstall FHDB'. For some reason, this seems to complete successfully, and I'm not sure if it's a necessary part of the process. But after it completes we can select 'install FHDB'. If you didn't create the PP.FMCB.APPS partition, this process will fail (same boat as OPL). You can now turn off the PS2, remove your FMcB card, and turn it back on. It should really slowly boot to FHDB now, takes about ten seconds or so.
3) At this point you should turn off (and maybe even unplug) your Ps2. Remove the HDD, and connect it to your PC.
You need to use HDL Dump to install games to your hard drive, as it seems to be the only program that works with 2TB drives. HDL Dump is a command-line program though, so if you're not comfortable typing commands then I suggest using either HDL Dumb or HDL Dump Helper Gui, the latter of which is my favorite.
Per forum rules, I'm not gonna tell you where or how to get your games, but I will recommend that you try to keep them all in a .iso format because that has worked the best for me. A free program called PowerISO can convert most disc formats into .iso files.
3 optional) Once you've installed all your games, I recommend using OPL Manager to get cover arts for as many of them as you can. Cover art will make your OPL list a lot less confusing to navigate.
http://psx-scene.com/forums/f150/opl-manager-tool-manage-your-games-121516/
Make sure to right click this program and hit 'run as administrator', or it will fail. The first time you run this file it will create a file called "cache_hdl_local.dat", and each time you want to use OPL manager I recommend you delete this file first because it will force the program to reread your hard drive, detecting any games you installed recently.
Anyways, after OPL Manager has read your hard drive, you can select Batch Actions > Art Download to get tons of art for your games. This might take a long time. Once its done browse the hdl_hdd folder and copy the "ART" folder onto a usb thumb drive. Safely remove your hard drive, connect it to the PS2, connect the thumbdrive, and start up uLE. In uLE, copy the /mass/ART folder (using the R1 menu) and then paste it into your hard drive's +OPL partition (again using R1). This will take a VERY LONG TIME.
4) We're almost done here. You can now finally boot up OPL on your PS2. I recommend moving OPL's elf file into the PP.FMCB.APPS partition so that you don't need to connect a memory card or thumbdrive just to get into the loader. From the settings menu in OPL, you'll want to set HDD to 'AUTO' and change the default page to 'HDD'. I also recommend setting the automatic HDD spindown setting to 0, because that feature has caused nothing but trouble for me.
If you downloaded and installed cover art, you should enable it from the display settings.
Once you have all the settings in the way you like them, save your settings. Whenever you save your settings in OPL, you should remove all memory cards first. This forces OPL to save to your hard drive.
4 optional) Booting up FHDB takes a long time, and booting into OPL takes almost just as long on a 2TB drive. To shorten your waiting time, you can configure FHDB to boot into OPL without you having to tell it to. You can do this by selecting the FHDB configurator from the main FHDB menu, and then configuring the ESR1 keys. I set up mine so that AUTO goes to hdd/PP.FMCB.APPS/OPL/boot.elf, and all other buttons go to OSDSYS. That way, if I ever need to go to the FHDB menu I can just hold buttons while the Ps2 boots. Make sure you save your changes to the HDD when you're done.
5) You'd better get some .cfg files! Some games don't work in OPL without a bit of extra finesse, so if you wanna play Jak and Daxter you'll need to enable some compatibility modes! The best way I've found to do this involves connecting your ethernet adapter to your router via ethernet. If you don't know what a router is, you have some research to do before you try any of this.
You'll need to get into OPL and configure the network settings first. This is going to be just a bit different for everyone, but my settings needed to be as follows:
Advanced options: Off
Ethernet link mode: Auto
IP address type: Static
IP address: 192.168.1.128
Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS Server: 75.75.75.75
(everything below that line does not matter)
Let me break this down for you.
If you try using DHCP instead of static and it works, go for it, but mine did not so I needed to gather information. Using my PC (connected to the router via wifi) I ran the Windows command prompt (windows key+r, type cmd, enter) and used the command "ipconfig /all". That command puts a lot of info on screen that is mostly unimportant. The "Wireless LAN adapter settings" is what I care about here, because that's got the information about how I'm connecting to the router.
The line 'Default Gateway' shows two things off to the right, one is an IPV6 address (example: fe80::c2c1:c0ff:feb2:e21e%e10) and one is an IPV4 address (192.168.1.1). That's the address of the router: enter it into the ps2's Gateway setting. Your router's address might be slightly different.
For the IP address of the PS2, enter in something very similar, but change the number after the last period. I chose to make the PS2's address 192.168.1.128. It is extremely important that the first three chunks of this number match the first three chunks of the Gateway.
Your computer's windows prompt will also tell you what DNS server to use, just pick the first one that's in four chunks and it will probably work. Mine was 75.75.75.75.
Finally, make the Ps2's Mask 255.255.255.0 because every network I've ever seen used this as the subnet mask and yours is probably no exception. Hit OK on the menu, select Network Update, and hit Start. If this doesn't go through, try turning off your router's firewalls and do it again (this process is different for each router and I don't know how it works on yours).
Once you've gotten Network Update running, it will connect to the internet and try to download information about how best to run all of your games. I am not sure how reliable this is on a 2TB hard drive because for me it always says that it failed, but it also changed the compatibility settings on many of my games.
Once the update is finished (or fails?) you'll probably be ready to play whatever you've downloaded. If you wanna double check that the .cfg files really downloaded, you can check the 'game settings' on each game you have installed or browse the CFG folder in your +OPL partition through uLE. More information on appropriate CFG settings can be found on the official OPL compatibility list.
A final note: I've found that for some reason starting a game in OPL has a weird effect on your control sticks that will make you slowly spin and walk to the side in FPS games. You can fix this just by giving your sticks a full rotation once you're in game. I have no idea why this happens or how my fix works.