PS1/2 Aww, yeah, awesome! Free Mcboot!...Now what?

[drakorex]

Hacked my ps2 a couple weeks ago, Left it sit ever since. I know there are a variety of things I can do from this point. I could grab some emulators, but meh. I got wii and WiiU for that.

I've read about different ways to go about backup loading. I think Internal HDD is the way to go for that. I know it's possible to go as high as 1TB, but not sure if I can just go get a 1TB WD Passport and a sata adapter and be good, or if I need to look for a certain model, or what.

Would be nice if I could partition off a spare 2TB and use that. also unclear if there's other things I need to look out for, such as byte allocation size or something. Is it worth it to go external instead, and possible without it lagging every five seconds or anything?

 

[BlackWizzard17]

I'm not to sure about using an HDD but if you get the chance, you should go for it.
I on the other hand used DVD's for my back up's or other games because.it's easy, simple, and cheap.
Since the ps2 also has USB 1.1 I think, can have compatibility issues but loading games can be fine (tried Kingdom Hearts 2 FM, Time Splitters 2, Mortal Kombat) the only lag I got from those games where loading between selecting stages or waiting for some part of the story to load.

 

[steveroo]

hook that bad boy up to a crt tv via component, even 480i looks superb on an old tv set by component.

 

[blaisedinsd]

Hacked my ps2 a couple weeks ago, Left it sit ever since. I know there are a variety of things I can do from this point. I could grab some emulators, but meh. I got wii and WiiU for that.

I've read about different ways to go about backup loading. I think Internal HDD is the way to go for that. I know it's possible to go as high as 1TB, but not sure if I can just go get a 1TB WD Passport and a sata adapter and be good, or if I need to look for a certain model, or what.

Would be nice if I could partition off a spare 2TB and use that. also unclear if there's other things I need to look out for, such as byte allocation size or something. Is it worth it to go external instead, and possible without it lagging every five seconds or anything?

For internal HDD you will need a network adapter and an IDE HDD and not all of them are compatible mainly because it has to fit the spacing the way the network adapter is made. There is a decent compatibility list you can find with google or hopefully you simply have some old hard drives around that you could try to see if they work.

With the HDD you can rip games from disc if your PS2 isn't giving you DRE like they often do. If you want to pirate some games you downloaded you will need to take the HDD out of the PS2 and connect it to a computer with a IDE to USB adapter and use a program calle WinHiip. Formatting you don't need to worry about as either your PS2 homebrew or WinHiip will format the drive for you and it is some non-standard format so only those programs can read it.

 

[Plstic]

For internal HDD you will need a network adapter and an IDE HDD and not all of them are compatible mainly because it has to fit the spacing the way the network adapter is made. There is a decent compatibility list you can find with google or hopefully you simply have some old hard drives around that you could try to see if they work.

With the HDD you can rip games from disc if your PS2 isn't giving you DRE like they often do. If you want to pirate some games you downloaded you will need to take the HDD out of the PS2 and connect it to a computer with a IDE to USB adapter and use a program calle WinHiip. Formatting you don't need to worry about as either your PS2 homebrew or WinHiip will format the drive for you and it is some non-standard format so only those programs can read it.

I personally use HDLGMan for transferring my games over the network to my HDD. My motherboard doesn't have an IDE port and I'm too cheap of a bastard to buy an adapter.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

One thing to keep in mind, most PS2 games are pretty small so getting a large 1TB hard drive would probably be a waste. (I have had an 80GB drive in mine and it was plenty. I only upgraded to the 400GB because it was laying around. Yes I managed to put more than 80GB's worth of games but only by not being selective at all.)

Most games are under 700MB's, I think there are a total of 3 dual layer DVD games, and probably 20% of the games on the PS2 where released on CD so yeah... Even DVD based games a lot of those could have been put on 2 CD's (Not many games even cracked the 2GB mark on the PS2.)

I guess the main point to take away from my post? If you have a phat PS2 and an old PC or something laying around with a hard drive in it that isn't too small, buy the network adapter and stuff that old hard drive in there and don't worry about the space issue too much. By too small, I would say less than 40GB's might be pushing things? 80GB's seemed like lots (Probably 50ish games on it.)

Edit: A list of the CD based PS2 games, some of them don't even fill a CD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_2_CD-ROM_games

 

[Qtis]

Ripping open the network adapter removed most limits for the port form factor of the internal HDD for me. Basically I hit a 500gb HDD in their by just removing the internal plate that fixes the ports to a certain location.

Also do note that the 500 GB drive is more than enough for a PS2. I still have space on mine but still have all games if ever want to play (and a few extras due to my brother donating his PS2 games a few years back)

 

[drakorex]

1TB may seem a bit much for just games, but also thinking about music and movies and such.