The PS2 has to be my 2nd all-time favourite console (GameCube takes no.1 because my lord the exclusives and nostalgia-bias). Sony really went all-out with this system in a way that they don't do these days. It was affordable, it played those new-fangled DVDs, you could use your original PS1 discs on it no problem, the slim model was actually slim (It's been 20 years and I'm still impressed at how they managed it).
There's so many amazing games I've played on there, in so many different genres. Here's just a few:
Persona 3 FES, Gran Turismo 4, Kingdom Hearts, Star Wars Battlefront, Simpsons Hit and Run, Digital Devil Saga, Devil May Cry, Ratchet and Clank, Atelier Iris, Disgaea, San Andreas, Final Fantasy X...
MGS2, Phantom Brave, Vice City, Tekken, Persona 4, Need For Speed Underground, Tristia of the Deep-Blue Sea(?), Shadow of the Colossus, LEGO Star Wars, Silent Hill, SMT Nocturne, RE4...
There's so many games, even more of which I still need to get around to playing. I've braved through most of these classics on emulation but I'd like an original PS2 that I can run them on.
I own a slim model PS2 but this has some issues I'll get into later. For this project, I wanted to get an original PS2 relatively cheap, then mod the hell out of it to make it the 'ultimate' PS2 which I can use instead of relying on patchy emulation. Plus, if I can save a device that would otherwise just end up in landfill that's even better.
I wanted to get an original fat PS2 for a few reasons:
There's no way of putting this lightly but I intentionally went looking for a lemon. I wanted something cheap, but mostly functional. The console is probably going to sit on a shelf and just load games off HDD so looks didn't really matter either. This is what I ended up with:
This PS2 was sold console-only, 'for parts', at a grand total of 15 quid. There were a few faults but nothing that I really cared about. Point is, this was cheap enough that I could justify buying it, functional enough that I could use it for parts if it didn't work, and would benefit greatly from the mods I want to do.
Here are the problems you'll also likely have with a £15 PS2:
To start with, I wanted to clean up the console and open it up to make sure it wasn't full of cockroaches or feces and just give it a bit of a clean. This is almost certainly the first time it's been opened since the 2000s and it shows. Dust dust and more dust.
Now that's out of the way, I moved onto testing it. Obviously I won't be able to use any games but I should still be able to test that it outputs a signal to a TV. This is where the first mod I plan to use comes into play. I don't really want composite but I can't afford the proper HDMI mod (which is like 5x the cost of the console) so I went for an inbetween. I got one of the el cheapo PS2 to HDMI dongles and decided that I'll slap it into the case to both fix the broken connector and give me a way of hooking it up to my monitor easily.
We'll need to test the pinout from the adapter to the PS2 so I know where I need to solder to, which will be a bit fiddly with the loose connection but I'll manage. For now, we'll just focus on making sure we can actually get video output from this nugget. It was a bit fiddly but we got there in the end. It looks fine to me once you get the connector in just right.
Since the disc drive is out, we'll have to find a way to load games onto the system. I specifically chose the Fat PS2 because it can do this using the HDD port on the back. This got axed later on because not that many people were using Linux on their PS2s, surprisingly. It'll let us load OGL onto the PS2 and from there we can just load up our LEGALLY acquired iso files off a HDD and we should be golden. All you need for this is a HDD, the adapter, and a USB 2.0 / USB 1.1 memory stick (All my USB3 sticks wouldn't work)
Luckily, you can get cheap generics of this part now for pretty cheap, so this won't break the bank. Here's the one I got, it cost me about the same as the console and is branded 'GameStar'. I paid a bit more for the SATA version since I didn't have any IDE drives on hand. I've heard mixed things about these generics but they seem to work alright. The official Sony ones are a bit more expensive and in limited supply, and they all seem to be IDE only. Oddly I couldn't find any, I think most people here just got a slim PS2 when they came out.
I'm going to use the HDD to get FreeHDBoot on there. I was tempted to get a FreeMCBoot memory card and try booting a game off a USB stick first but I figured that would be unnecessary since i'd be using the HDD anyway. This also helps to keep the cost of the project down a bit. I'm actually going to be using an old SSD I had kicking around as the drive. This probably won't make load times any faster but it will make the PS2 quieter, which is nice.
We'll be replacing the old AV connector (which barely works) with the guts of the HDMI dongle. This'll solve the problem of the bad connector and mean we can hook this up without stuff hanging out the back. Once I had made sure I got all the stuff I needed to do done I cracked open the PS2 and the dongle to see hat we're dealing with. I'm planning to just get the pinout from both and hard-wire them together.
I did quibble about getting a proper component cable but I don't have a TV / monitor with component input so it'd be going through a cheap HDMI converter anyway. Maybe in the future I'll do a better mod but at this stage it'll do. PCSX2 will obviously look better in this instance, but for most gameplay this'll be fine. I remember playing the PS2 over composite anyway so a bit of blur will match my memories.
Nowadays you can get a straight PS2 to HDMI cable without an adapter but I opted for the dongle since I knew the port was faulty and would need hard-soldering. If your PS2 isn't a rotbox from Cashies that'd probably be a good option. Though, my model of dongle also includes a headphone jack which is handy. I should still get sound from the HDMI but if I pair this with some sort of volume control knob it'd be handy for just plugging headphones directly into the back. I'll get round to that eventually, I think one of those inline-remote style headphone cables paired with a proper panel mount 3.5mm jack on the back of the console would be a good solution. Sadly I don't think it'll ever be possible to just possible to just plug any pair of 3.5 headphones into the controller like I can do with my PS4 (Sony are cool sometimes) but this reminds me a bit of the 360E.
So after testing it a bit with the wonky AV connector, I used a multimeter to work out where it connects up to the video connector, and also how it connects to the HDMI board. I'm going to remove the old video connector and solder the HDMI converter directly to the board. That way I can just plug the HDMI into it pretty cleanly and not have to deal with the dodgy connector. You unfortunately can't get replacement PS2 AV ports and it'll be fine.
This is where I both messed up and got taught a lesson in patience. I couldn't seem to get the AV signal out and since I was having to reassemble the metal shields, then reconnect the PSU to the dodder board in order to test, I decided to skip putting it together and propped up the PSU with something. So, when I flicked the power supply on there was a very visible spark, a bang and the immediate sense of 'i fucked up'. The heatsink for one of the voltage regulators had gone straight across the legs on one of the surface ICs, and now it had its face blown out with very obvious burn marks. I was obviously quite miffed but this was an important lesson to not be impatient and do stupid things.
To add insult to injury i shocked myself getting the PSU out so also remember to leave PSUs unplugged for a little while to let the capacitors discharge. Interestingly after reconnecting it the PS2 powered on still, and did appear to be working to some extent, but at this point I really didn't want to mess with potentially broken stuff anymore. Replacement motherboards are super cheap and I still had the rest of the PS2 to use. If I ever need a spare EmotionEngine I'll know where to get it.
Luckily the replacement had a working AV port and worked absolutely fine. One thing with those dongles though is that they're heavy and put strain on the AV port, so i propped it up with some cardboard.
The original PS2 controllers kind of... suck. They were fine for the time and they even had some cool features but 20 years on there's some faults that make them less desirable. The main issue is that the buttons are pressure sensitive, like triggers. This means you can press them harder to trigger certain actions, but also means they feel 'weird' and a bit spongey. Not alot of games used this but if you happen to want to play The Bouncer you'll need a genuine PS2 pad to trigger the combos properly. If you really wanted to play The Bouncer, that is.
But thankfully, I have a PSone DualShock controller which is largely compatible with the PS2. It's a little beat-up and the colours don't match but it worked in alot of cases. This way you don't have the weird button pressure issue. This'll work for most things but it's still not the best solution either.
Thankfully, there's a better way: You can use PadEmu and specific bluetooth adapters to connect a PS4 or PS3 controller wirelessly to the console. I had a spare PS4 controller laying around so that'll be my new PS2 Controller. You can find info on what bluetooth adapters are known to work, but some el cheapo ones work. It's still a work in progress but the alternative is using specific adapters that are pricey. It works for most things and once you get the controller paired it just works wirelessly with no problems.
The PS4 controller needed a bit of cleaning (gunge stuck between the plastic) and new thumbsticks but works fine. It's a little worn but still fine (Side-note: when I got the new thumbsticks they were super hard (I thought I got ripped off) but they seemed to soften up after a bit of use - maybe it needs the oil in your hands to get it going?). I connected it to the PS2 using a "CSR 4.0" Bluetooth dongle which looks pretty low profile. You need to do the initial setup with a but after that it works perfectly - it works wirelessly, charges and syncs off the front USB port and even has rumble! This is much better than the original wired controllers, and it doesn't interfere with my PS4 which is nice. If you want to change settings outside of OPL you need a proper wired pad unfortunately.
It's worth noting that some PS2 games will have reduced functionality when not using a genuine pad, and some won't work at all. This seems to be random but mainly affects games that use the enhanced features which makes sense. Worth keeping a PS2 pad around for those. I couldn't get Disgaea 2 to work at all which was unfortunate, but if you change your settings you can get it to work..
Speaking of controllers, right above them are the memory card holders. I don't strictly need a physical memory card since OPL lets you configure a virtual memory card but it's a little fiddly. It creates a memory card for each game, and if the drive failed for whatever reason my saves would be toast unless backed up. So, I decided to get a PS2 memory card just in case, and also to add that little nostalgia factor. I don't play a huge amount of games so it'll work fine for me. I suggest you get an official Sony one, because those cheap 128/64MB ones have a tendency to get corrupted. The 8MB is a little small but it's not worth the risk.
I only have one HDMI port on my monitor, so I use a super cheap HDMI switch thing to change between different inputs. This worked fine for the PS2 but I noticed it would turn on, then off repeatedly on different things. I figured this was a power issue since whatever chip on there is powered solely by the HDMI 5V. So, I cracked it open, followed the 5V in to the voltage regulator and soldered a USB cable to the input leg, and GND to the HDMI shield.
I also noticed that there was a marking for a capacitor that was missing. I added a random capacitor to it in the hopes that maybe it'd also help.
And it works.
So, we now have a PS2 that is not only back from the grave but ready for the forseeable future. I'm pretty happy with the result, and it'll definitely see alot of use playing the classics.
The only real improvement I could suggest to this is a proper HDMI mod, but that would be double the cost of this entire project. They do seem to have much better video quality since they plug directly into the video signal but really I couldn't justify the price to myself. The HDMI output looks really good and it'll work fine for most things. I have noticed that in some menus and certain games it 'jitters' so I might have to play with resolution settings but on most games it's fine.
So now it's time to put this one to the test, finally getting round to Ar Tonelico. (16:9 modded for your pleasure)