That's cool and all, but you can probably run your entire PS2 library from stuff you already own.
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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If you have a relatively powerful computer or phone, and your library only contains games from the console's top 100 or so, you're probably right.
Some people like to play on original hardware but I guess this still being emulation makes that a little cloudy. I certainly couldn't justify it. I own a computer and wireless controller, so as you said.
Kinda difficult to put all of your game discs into the PS2
Although seeing a CD carousel for it would be pretty neat.
You can install a hard drive and burn your games to it.
I've got a hard drive that'll make you burn
Not if I give ya the cold shoulder.
times like these I wish I didn't live paycheck to paycheck
If it makes you feel any better compatibility is probably pretty mixed. Last I checked the PS2 memcard slot doesn't have enough bandwidth to load all games reliably.
Makes me wonder if it's faster than the USB 1.1 ports on the PS2. I used to load PS2 games from a USB drive but 1.1 speeds meant that some games had stuttering FMVs and some with texture/geometry streaming were more susceptible to pop-in.
I can't imagine it'd be much better via memory card though, considering it was only ever intended for small savegames and fot loading firmware updates (which is also what this memory card or rather FreeMcBoot exploits).
From my experience using mem2sio to run games from an SD card is that the memory card slot causes issues with certain games causing issues from lagging cutscenes, long load times, and freezes. Are those fixed in this version or is it similar as far as compatibility goes?
Probably cheaper/better to use a 2.5" hard drive. Though I guess this works with Slims as well
I think the best thing is to load your games over the network. The usb ports are only 1.0. And I’m pretty sure the network adapter hard drive connector either only accepts up to 40gb drives or it only uses a pata connection.
I have a 2TB SATA HDD in my PS2 fat. AFAIK that's still the maximum storage size possible with the FMCB/wLaunchELF software. I believe that an unmodded original network adapter should be able to take up to a 512MB IDE drive, but I'd have to double-check that.
I used to use a third-party "network adapter" (they usually don't have Ethernet, just an HDD connector) with SATA support, which still works fine (it seems like most brands stopped working properly after a certain homebrew software version), but later I bought an official adapter (IDE/PATA) and a SATA conversion kit (a kit specific to the PS2 network adapter, not a standard IDE-SATA converter, which sometimes work with the PS2 and sometimes don't) so I could try network stuff.
I don't think it was worth it, but these days it's probably the way to go since there no longer seems to be any way of telling the non-working aftermarket adaptors from the working ones; the companies making the bad ones just started putting the brand name of the one still working adapter on their products.
I bought a 3rd party drive adaptor without a network port and had to load my games on my PC using a network enclosure.
It was still a pain. Its all soooooo slow and buggy.
Having tried both a USB3 drive adapter and downloading over Ethernet, I'll say that Ethernet was way slower for me.
The average copy time on the adapter was about 30 minutes, but over Ethernet it took 3-4 times as long.
I have a 500GB drive in my hard drive slot using the third party adapter and grimDoomer OPL
There are newer adapters for the network port. I use a 500GB SATA drive just fine, it's just a pain in the butt to transfer games
Why is it a paid in the butt
Probably because it's pretty slow, and the custom drive format used by the PS2 isn't very flexible; game images have to be in one continuous block, and blocks can't be moved. You can overwrite one game with another, but only if it's the same size or smaller. So if you delete games off in the reverse of the order you put them on you're fine, but otherwise you're going to leave empty "holes" of wasted space.
I just added a SATA drive to my ps2 yesterday, and it plays ps2 games fine but I really want to play psx games. Is there a solution for this yet?
What ShinkanTrain said. The last a read about it, the PS2 only switches into PS1 mode on a trigger from the optical drive subsystem, and then most of the memory and other hardware used to run homebrew is deactivated. AFAIK no-one's yet found a way to trigger the change in software and keep the connection to wherever you're loading your game from.
I believe that on certain revisions of the console, MechaPwn can overcome the protection, but you still need a "Playstation 1" CD in the drive to actually run something, as ShinkanTrain wrote.
You can use POPStarter to use the built-in software emulator, but it's not great. There's also FreeMCBoot and MechaPwn if burning discs isn't a problem (might only work on some models? I'm not sure)
I modded my PS Mini for PS1 games. Its pretty simple.
Hell yeah, that sounds awesome. Does it have native composite video out? I wanna play on my crt without using an hdmi converter
I think the PS Mini is HDMI only.
Do you happen to have a Wii lying around? It can do actually pretty good PS1 emulation nowadays, and supports analog signals (including 240p)