Since the vast majority of games just suck in this day and age, I felt like getting out my PS2 and trying to make it able to run backups once again. Since it's the last model (or one of the latest) FreeMCBoot doesn't quite support it because of the different drivers for the disk reader apparently, so looked for alternatives. My model is SCPH-90004 for reference. Now, I found two things that are available and I can buy from someplace that's not ebay or something similar.
First one is a chip named "Mars Pro GM-816HD". It seems to offer some nice things like region-free, is the cheapest option and supports homebrew, so I have a few questions...
- Is this one chip reliable or it's just a knock-off or something? No experience whatsoever on this, so just trying to make sure.
- How do I go about installing it? I have a guide for installing a different chip, but do all chips install the exact same way? This one is the soldering-kind.
- How much better is it compared to Swap Magic Disks?
Which brings me to the other option, SMDs. I found three different ones, all being version 3.8, so here are the things I wanna ask about...
- Does version 3.8 support my model?
- Do SMDs only allow you to play backups instead of homebrew as well?
- How do you actually use them past the just swapping part? I see there are two disks and all...
- Does it let you bypass region-lock without any exceptions? There are some Japan-only games I'm interested in...
- Can you actually play PS2 games from a CD or it has to be DVD?
- Does it also allow playing backups of PS1 games?
- What's the "slide tool" and is it required? I see it stated as mandatory to either have that or the Magic Swap Pro, but seeing how the MSP is, it's the same as the old trick with the toothpicks...
Any help on this is appreciated, hope someone can answer these for me sometime soon, really wanna get back into playing PS2 games!
PS: The three different SMDs I found are these three 1, 2, 3, which one should I be getting out of the three?
First one is a chip named "Mars Pro GM-816HD". It seems to offer some nice things like region-free, is the cheapest option and supports homebrew, so I have a few questions...
- Is this one chip reliable or it's just a knock-off or something? No experience whatsoever on this, so just trying to make sure.
- How do I go about installing it? I have a guide for installing a different chip, but do all chips install the exact same way? This one is the soldering-kind.
- How much better is it compared to Swap Magic Disks?
Which brings me to the other option, SMDs. I found three different ones, all being version 3.8, so here are the things I wanna ask about...
- Does version 3.8 support my model?
- Do SMDs only allow you to play backups instead of homebrew as well?
- How do you actually use them past the just swapping part? I see there are two disks and all...
- Does it let you bypass region-lock without any exceptions? There are some Japan-only games I'm interested in...
- Can you actually play PS2 games from a CD or it has to be DVD?
- Does it also allow playing backups of PS1 games?
- What's the "slide tool" and is it required? I see it stated as mandatory to either have that or the Magic Swap Pro, but seeing how the MSP is, it's the same as the old trick with the toothpicks...
Any help on this is appreciated, hope someone can answer these for me sometime soon, really wanna get back into playing PS2 games!
PS: The three different SMDs I found are these three 1, 2, 3, which one should I be getting out of the three?
Last edited by ThoD,