PS1/2 Getting games on the hard drive

[BenRK]

I wish google was more helpful. Anyway, I recently grabbed a cheap phat PS2 and a network adapter. I had some old PATA drives hanging around, so I figured I could use them. They fit just fine of course.

Anyway, how exactly am I supposed to get games installed to the hard drive? I would love to just boot games off of it rather then have it sit there being pointless. Everything I've found seems to be out of date or no help what so ever. SO! Can you guys help me out here?

I have a 160GB hard drive, Maxtor. A phat PS2 with free MCboot thing installed to a memory card. I DO have PS2 loader installed as well, but that doesn't help if I can't actually get games on there.

 

[Armadillo]

Plug drive into pc, Ide->usb adapter will work fine. Then use winhiip to transfer the games to it. If you have not already done so, it can also format the drive for you. I think there are some guides around for it, but you shouldn't really need one as it's pretty much, select drive->load image->transfer.

If you don't want to do that, you can transfer them over network using hdl_dumb. Open ps2 loader has network server built in. Set your network address, start the server. Connect to it using hdl_dumb and transfer the game across. This is much slower than direct connection though and takes around 50min for a full 4.37GB image.

 

[BenRK]

Wow... no way I can just rip games directly to my PS2, huh? I don't have an IDE to USB converter, all my external hard drives are SATA to USB. The second option sounds more appealing in terms of stuff I can do now, though it would require me dragging my PS2 over to my router, plug it in, and bla bla bla.

 

[Armadillo]

Hdloader can rip from dvd, I don't think openps2loader can, but I haven't looked into it too much (my laser is pretty much dead). Format is the same though, so should be able to rip it with hdloader and then play with openps2loader. Ps2 lasers do have a tendency to die though, so I wouldn't recommend doing it. You're also restricted to original games and games from your region when ripping them like that.