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Hardware Mods - the thread of "wtf is shorting out this time?!"

Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
It seems PS2 is in the air around here, a bit. I set all that up myself, and have played through .hack Infection, and am a few hours into Mutation. I forgot how incredible the PS2 library is. Pick a game and play it, Tegan! How big a hard drive did you put in there? I went with 2tb which was overkill, I found about 900gb of stuff I might play someday.
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Yeah, receiving the MemCard Pro 2 in the mail that I preordered prompted me to get a fat PS2 and get all this set up myself. I went on archive.org and just download anything I either knew I wanted to play or sounded interesting. I ended up playing Guitar Hero a bunch last night for some reason lol
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Sure wish we'd get an ODE or something for PS2, considering the compatibility issues with a bunch of games I'd actually like to play. To wit: I can't get any further in Rock Band because any song on the second layer of the dual layer disc won't load and freezes the game. Apparently there's a way to "flatten" the iso to make it work? I dunno, because I can't get into the PS2 Place forum or whatever it's called because no matter what browser I use to go there, it blocks me from seeing anything and accuses me of being a hacker or a bot lmao
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Oh, okay. Does FHDB even work with the Game ID functionality of the MemCard Pro 2? To me knowledge, it's only supported by OPL at this point...
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I didn't even know that was possible. The documentation for PS2 softmodding is so scattershot, sheesh. I just have a Free McBoot card in the second slot, which I'm going to keep doing because I sometimes have to move files around (such as taking my clear file from .hack//Infection and putting it on the .hack//Mutation virtual memory card to carry over my progress).
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Apparently there's another method of identifying games that doesn't use GameID that they're working on using. It would enable even disc-based games to have their own ID for the MemCard Pro 2 to use without any homebrew. That would be fantastic to say the least.
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
That is cool, but I will never be buying another disc again for any system if I can help it lol (and own none for PS1 or PS2 anyway). Still, cool that they were able to implement that feature!
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I wish OPL, when updated, would figure out which games need which weird patch/mode things to apply before launching each game, so I don't have to look at a spreadsheet somewhere online.
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
It also apparently makes it where they don't have to specifically send the GameID in OPL, too, so it may actually even work in something like HDLoader if folks are still using that.

I don't use discs very often myself, although I've kept all my stuff around. I do have a Slim that I haven't done any real sort of ISO loading with outside of briefly testing a MC2SIO, which seemed to work mostly okay when it worked, but was very finicky at the time I bought it. I still would love an xStation, or the mStation (or whatever it's going to be called) when it comes out for PS1.
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
The xStation is fantasic on PS1, yeah. Strongly recommend it, it works great and afaik there are no compatibility issues with games. I don't think it's too difficult an install, either, though I wouldn't recommend it as someone's first soldering attempt.

The reason I ended up buying a phat PS2 and a 2TB HDD was because I was immediately unsatisfied with MC2SIO when I set that up. FMVs in games like FFX-2 are completely broken and out of sync, and there are even more compatibility issues with it than playing off a HDD. Plus the power draw on the memory card/controller board of the PS2 is quite high for MC2SIO, so much so that wireless controllers don't work with it. I'm using this adapter with a Dualshock 4 for my PS2 with a HDD, and it works great (and thankfully, worked out of the box, so I didn't have to go through the weird feeling process of updating an 8bitdo product). Had to open up and clean my PS4 controller out, though - about two thousand of hours of FFXIV on it really gunked it up with grossness. Clean now, though.
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Yeah, I agree on the MC2SIO. It was a'ight for a few games I tried, others stuttered in FMVs. Just not enough throughput. And I can't imagine going through something like Suikoden V with those awful battle load times! I used HDLoader to finish off the second half of the game back in the day, and having nearly instantaneous battle loads was legit awesome.

I probably should buy a larger hard drive for this setup, I've only got I think around 200GB total space. But I guess I'd need to get a SATA-to-IDE adapter going. I assume they don't even make IDE hard drives anymore.
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
SATA-to-IDE adapters aren't bad, I bought this one and haven't had any issues as of yet. This was the hard drive I bought, but it must have been on sale because I only paid $40 for it, not the $110 it's listed for there. Granted I can't even hit 1TB full on it, so I dunno if you need to go 2TB, obviously it's up to you how much space you'd need.
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
That might be easier than jury-rigging something with the old network adapter. And yeah, I suspect I wouldn't need that much space. I'm not looking to put complete sets on there or anything near it, just stuff I'd eventually be interested in playing.
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I bit on one of those OLED Gameboy Color screen mods you may have heard about, and upgraded my old Q5 GBC that I never really used to this:

t8ojTtU.jpeg


And as an Analogue Pocket owner, and someone who has done far too many of these mods... I gotta say, I'm not disappointed. It's hard for my dumbass to photograph, but this looks amazing in person. Those blacks are even blacker in real life - I can't really tell where the Metroid II title screen there ends and the bezel begins. I don't really know how it handles batteries yet as I haven't run it through its paces yet, but I'm surprised how much I like it. I'm also glad they were out of the white screen bezel, as this Gameboy would have been too white had I been able to buy that lol
 
MCBanjoMike

MCBanjoMike

Sudden chomper
(He/him)
Wow, that looks phenomenal. I’ve always loved my OLED TV for retro games, because the pillarboxing on either side that comes with playing 4:3 stuff completely disappears because of the perfect blacks of the screen. Some day I would like to do a mod like this to one of my GBA SPs.

To get back to PS2 stuff: I have an early model fat PS2 with a failing disc drive. Is there an extremely easy way to soft mod it to run off an HDD? I mean totally braindead.
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Do you have the PS2 HDD adapter, or are you willing to purchase one of these? Note that if you have the Sony HDD adapter, you will have to modify it a bit, and I've not done that. You'll also need a Free McBoot memory card, which you can either buy or have someone make for you. Otherwise, it's a matter of installing games onto a HDD using your PC. I wouldn't call it braindead, though... The documentation is a bit outdated and hard to find. This video will probably work for you, so that'll give you an idea of how difficult the whole process will be.
 
Patrick

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
I feel the same about my OLED Vita. It's just a really nice screen for retrogames.

And yeah, that GBC looks extremely nice. It's a super sharp look overall. Have you tried out color games on the screen, and are you happy with them?
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Yeah, I've tried a few color games, and they are vivid as heck, I'm quite happy with it.

EDIT: Here's a picture of the Kirby's Dreamland color hack on it:

oNRhtJ5.jpeg
 
Last edited:
ShakeWell

ShakeWell

Slam Master
(he, etc.)
MCBanjoMike said:
Wow, that looks phenomenal. I’ve always loved my OLED TV for retro games, because the pillarboxing on either side that comes with playing 4:3 stuff completely disappears because of the perfect blacks of the screen. Some day I would like to do a mod like this to one of my GBA SPs.

To get back to PS2 stuff: I have an early model fat PS2 with a failing disc drive. Is there an extremely easy way to soft mod it to run off an HDD? I mean totally braindead.
Click to expand...

I'm not using an HDD, but FreeMcBoot was super easy to set up, and that's the crux of the operation. I just followed what Tito at Macho Nacho said, and it worked great! I'm totally braindead, too, and had no trouble!
 
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