Best Version of PS2, PS2 Modchip, and SNES?

[BuckoA51]

Last I tried installing games over network was actually faster than trying to install from DVD. And from the sound of it, this guy won't have DVDs in the first place.

That's interesting, aren't all PS2 Network adapters limited to 10mb rather than the now more common 100mb?

But yeah, I forgot, you don't want to be dealing with any of that: get a USB to IDE adapter.

Still quite the hassle to mess removing your PS2's network adapter, hard drive etc I find. Fortunately for me network or disk install is perfectly convenient (already have a modchip).

[Voultar]

Not quite. ALL PS2 consoles lack the PS1 GTE/GPU chipsets.

The GPU is a seperate chip on PS1 anyway, but the GTE is embedded in the R3000A chip there. They must have really gone out of their way to strip that (and MDEC?) out of IOP. And there's also the question how this affects sound, as I've been told SPU2 has been integrated into IOP as of SCPH-5000x. So who knows if they kept that hardware around for Deckard?

But really good information, the existence of Deckard doesn't seem to have been publicized until quite recently.

The R3000 is a standard, off the shelf MIPS CPU that Sony reworked and used. They really didn't have to go out of their way to strip anything from it, they just began using an off-the-shelf version. Sony added the GTE to the die of that CPU for the PS1. Those geometry calculations are handed off to a vector prcessor on the EE. Deckard is an embedded PPC chip that took over the IOP for the PS2. Sony bumped the clock speed up on the proc. due to the higher emulation demand.

It's much like the 2A03 in the NES/Famicom systems. Ricoh added an APU (sound) and some registers to handle controller inputs for their 6502.

[ZellSF]

Last I tried installing games over network was actually faster than trying to install from DVD. And from the sound of it, this guy won't have DVDs in the first place.

That's interesting, aren't all PS2 Network adapters limited to 10mb rather than the now more common 100mb?

But yeah, I forgot, you don't want to be dealing with any of that: get a USB to IDE adapter.

Still quite the hassle to mess removing your PS2's network adapter, hard drive etc I find. Fortunately for me network or disk install is perfectly convenient (already have a modchip).

Convenient, but five times slower (that's with a USB2 adapter, sure USB3 and a decent drive could do better).

Disc installs are wear and tear on your disc drive and network installs are unreliable.

[atheistgod1999]

Best version of PS1 and PS1 modchip?

[Voultar]

Go with a Mayumi v4 for the PS1 (SCPH-5XXXX and up).

Go with a Modbo v1.93 for your PS2. Its a clone running Matrix Infinity firmware and is rock-steady stable with all of the options.

[telemetry]

To be honest, you guys are making these 79000+ slimline PS2s sound appealing. I've seen the compatibility lists and even if it's that bad, the missing games aren't really a loss.

Is it true that the slimline PS2's can still be soft-modded?

There are rarely fat-PS2s for sell in my local electronic trading shops, but the slimlines are plentiful, and it seems a lot easier to check the store models than to try to judge the condition of an EBay listing.

[Rune]

Sorry to hijack this topic a little but while we're on the subject, was there ever a solution for playing PSX games on the PS2 via the hard drive?
From what I remember, the HD Loader application only worked with PS2 disk images. Was there anything you could use for PSX games?

[ZellSF]

Sorry to hijack this topic a little but while we're on the subject, was there ever a solution for playing PSX games on the PS2 via the hard drive?
From what I remember, the HD Loader application only worked with PS2 disk images. Was there anything you could use for PSX games?

Just emulators. And at that point you might as well use better hardware.

If you want something for an actual PSX, PSIO is an option.

[BONKERS]

https://tsumi.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/ ... psx-scene/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130118132 ... press.com/
https://tsumi.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/ ... s-scammer/
http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/psi ... ing.46030/


I'd take PSIO with a grain of salt.

[ZellSF]

https://tsumi.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/ ... psx-scene/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130118132 ... press.com/
https://tsumi.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/ ... s-scammer/
http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/psi ... ing.46030/


I'd take PSIO with a grain of salt.

Won't comment on the scam accusations, but doubts about PSIO being real are a bit outdated: the device is released and end users have tested it.

Compatibility is not perfect though and it requires a hard mod of the motherboard. Definitely not for everyone, but it is your best option for playing PSX games on native hardware without a pile of discs.

[Woozle]

Go with a Mayumi v4 for the PS1 (SCPH-5XXXX and up).

Go with a Modbo v1.93 for your PS2. Its a clone running Matrix Infinity firmware and is rock-steady stable with all of the options.

Would this one work http://www.ebay.com/itm/MODBO5-0-V1-93- ... 1287223300 ?

[maxtherabbit]

Gonna go ahead and necro this since there's another recent thread about best PS2 models

I recommend a V7 (SCPH-39001) equipped with a KHS-400C laser assembly. The V10 SCPH-500X are great, too. But the MECHACON is booby-trapped and requires a couple of additional mods to safely play burned media.

Are you referring to the romeo mod or something else?

I had been reading a bunch of l_olivera posts claiming the romeo mod was bogus but idk really

[kel]

There are possible alternatives to the romeo mod if you prefer. You could use a combination of the summ0ne tracking resistor fix and either Comsoft shutdown PIC fix or subzero motor driver IC mute fix for mechacon crash protection.

There aren't any install diagrams for the v9/v10 as far as I know as these fixes were more widely used for the v12 but schematics for those versions are available so it's not too difficult to find the correct points to solder to.

I have a v9 and a v12 to chip and after thinking about it I'm going to use that method for both consoles, might even add the romeo fix on the v9 for good measure but not sure if it's really needed with the other two fixes.

[maxtherabbit]

interesting, found them on google I'll read up on those mods

[Lawfer]

Not quite. ALL PS2 consoles lack the PS1 GTE/GPU chipsets. The graphics are emulated (not micro-code compatible) and rendered by the 1st Vector Processor on the EE chip. That's why you have a " texture smoothing" option for PS1 titles.

The GPU is a seperate chip on PS1 anyway, but the GTE is embedded in the R3000A chip there. They must have really gone out of their way to strip that (and MDEC?) out of IOP.

Interesting, I never knew that, so how does it affect PS1 games played on PS2?

[fernan1234]

For PS2 nothing comes even close to beating a MCBoot + SATA modified Network adapter (or a third party adapter) + cheap large capacity 3.5'' HDD, running games using OPL.

I have a 2TB drive that I loaded up with every game I might possibly want so I never have to worry about installing anything else. It's done and it's beautiful.

Not worth modding a PS2 just for PS1 backups, since mods on PS1 are easier, and especially now that we have the PSIO. Sure, compatibility is still not 100% (FF7 out of all games is broken!), but for the great majority of games that do work perfectly there's nothing better. You can even get away with running most backups (except games that switch discs without saving first) without any modding at all using one of those region unlocking discs, I forget what they're called, combined with a little spring or clip to trick the PSX/PSOne's disc tray. Last time I checked they sell for 10 bucks on ebay.

[Classicgamer]

The absolute best PS2 to own is the debug "Test" stations. You see them on eBay fairly regularly. They will play any PS1 and PS2 games from any region, backups and original. The best PS1 is the blue debug stations. They have no issues with non-mod-chip compatible games or free mcboot compatibility issues.

There is no tangible difference between playing PS1 games on the PS1 or PS2. There is a very minor difference in video quality due to the different GPU but you'd find it hard to say which is better. I see a bigger difference switching from component video to RGB.

If you play on an HD monitor, there is an argument for saying that the best playstion overall is the fat PS3 debugging consoles. They will play any PS1, PS2 and PS3 game (any region, backups and original) and they can upscale PS2 games to 480p, 720p or 1080p.

I have a fat PS2 with free mcboot and a Sata hard drive. I have to say that it is very easy to live with. I bought a mod chip but I haven't bothered to install it yet as free mcboot does 99% of what I want. It's a little annoying that I have to copy and patch my original Japanese games though.

[Lawfer]

The best PS1 is the blue debug stations. They have no issues with non-mod-chip compatible games or free mcboot compatibility issues.

Are you talking about the Net Yaroze?

[NormalFish]

The best PS1 is the blue debug stations. They have no issues with non-mod-chip compatible games or free mcboot compatibility issues.

Are you talking about the Net Yaroze?

They're similar, but the Net Yaroze, iirc, was marketted to a sort of enthusiast dev-oriented consumer, while the blue debug units s/he's referring to were used by devs in a professional environment, if that makes any sense. They're the PS1 equivelant of TEST PS2s, while the Net Yaroze is kind of like a TOOL PS2.

[fernan1234]

I have a fat PS2 with free mcboot and a Sata hard drive. I have to say that it is very easy to live with. I bought a mod chip but I haven't bothered to install it yet as free mcboot does 99% of what I want. It's a little annoying that I have to copy and patch my original Japanese games though.

Not sure what you mean by patching, but launching games through OPL should require no patching (a few games may require choosing a particular mode for full compatibility, but that's a separate issue). Any ripped ISO should work without patches. Patches were needed to load backup discs through ESR. The old HD Loader may have also, but those tools are outdated.

[Lawfer]

The best PS1 is the blue debug stations. They have no issues with non-mod-chip compatible games or free mcboot compatibility issues.

Are you talking about the Net Yaroze?

They're similar, but the Net Yaroze, iirc, was marketted to a sort of enthusiast dev-oriented consumer, while the blue debug units s/he's referring to were used by devs in a professional environment, if that makes any sense. They're the PS1 equivelant of TEST PS2s, while the Net Yaroze is kind of like a TOOL PS2.

Are the blue PS1 Debug stations and the PS2 "TEST" stations the only official units that can run burned CD-Rs or burned DVD-R without any modchip or softmod? Just wondering, because I see a few other kind of dev/debug related units.

[maxtherabbit]

For PS2 nothing comes even close to beating a MCBoot + SATA modified Network adapter (or a third party adapter) + cheap large capacity 3.5'' HDD, running games using OPL.

I have a 2TB drive that I loaded up with every game I might possibly want so I never have to worry about installing anything else. It's done and it's beautiful.

Not worth modding a PS2 just for PS1 backups, since mods on PS1 are easier, and especially now that we have the PSIO. Sure, compatibility is still not 100% (FF7 out of all games is broken!), but for the great majority of games that do work perfectly there's nothing better. You can even get away with running most backups (except games that switch discs without saving first) without any modding at all using one of those region unlocking discs, I forget what they're called, combined with a little spring or clip to trick the PSX/PSOne's disc tray. Last time I checked they sell for 10 bucks on ebay.

in my case I hardmodded my PS2 because I like the ability to play burned and import PS2 discs, as well as the additional benefit of no longer needing to accommodate an additional console into my setup, even though I already had a modded PS1

the PS2 hard mod can happily coexist with a HDD and OPL btw, it's not an either/or question

[fernan1234]

The hard mod is definitely valuable for the purpose of only having one console set up. But as far as PS2 games are concerned, the HDD solution virtually invalidates the desirability of the hard mod. The loading times from HDD are a thing of wonder, can't imagine ever going back to discs. In general I just hate optical media. All of it can rot (as it is bound to do anyway) in hell as far as I'm concerned.

[Lawfer]

For PS2 nothing comes even close to beating a MCBoot + SATA modified Network adapter (or a third party adapter) + cheap large capacity 3.5'' HDD, running games using OPL.

I have a 2TB drive that I loaded up with every game I might possibly want so I never have to worry about installing anything else. It's done and it's beautiful.

Not worth modding a PS2 just for PS1 backups, since mods on PS1 are easier, and especially now that we have the PSIO. Sure, compatibility is still not 100% (FF7 out of all games is broken!), but for the great majority of games that do work perfectly there's nothing better. You can even get away with running most backups (except games that switch discs without saving first) without any modding at all using one of those region unlocking discs, I forget what they're called, combined with a little spring or clip to trick the PSX/PSOne's disc tray. Last time I checked they sell for 10 bucks on ebay.

in my case I hardmodded my PS2 because I like the ability to play burned and import PS2 discs, as well as the additional benefit of no longer needing to accommodate an additional console into my setup, even though I already had a modded PS1

the PS2 hard mod can happily coexist with a HDD and OPL btw, it's not an either/or question

Don't you need a hardmod to run games off HDD anyways?

[nmalinoski]

For PS2 nothing comes even close to beating a MCBoot + SATA modified Network adapter (or a third party adapter) + cheap large capacity 3.5'' HDD, running games using OPL.

I have a 2TB drive that I loaded up with every game I might possibly want so I never have to worry about installing anything else. It's done and it's beautiful.

Not worth modding a PS2 just for PS1 backups, since mods on PS1 are easier, and especially now that we have the PSIO. Sure, compatibility is still not 100% (FF7 out of all games is broken!), but for the great majority of games that do work perfectly there's nothing better. You can even get away with running most backups (except games that switch discs without saving first) without any modding at all using one of those region unlocking discs, I forget what they're called, combined with a little spring or clip to trick the PSX/PSOne's disc tray. Last time I checked they sell for 10 bucks on ebay.

in my case I hardmodded my PS2 because I like the ability to play burned and import PS2 discs, as well as the additional benefit of no longer needing to accommodate an additional console into my setup, even though I already had a modded PS1

the PS2 hard mod can happily coexist with a HDD and OPL btw, it's not an either/or question

Don't you need a hardmod to run games off HDD anyways?

Nope. Just peripherals. You need a hard disk, a network adapter, and a memory card with FreeMcBoot. You don't even need to open the console.

You even have options. You can install games from disc, but that takes forever; so you can instead hook the hard disk up to your PC (either internally or with a dock) and use WinHIIP to format the drive and copy games from ISO, bin/cue, or whatever formats it supports, or you can use something like hdl_dump/hdl_dumb send games over the network.

If you don't have any IDE support on your PC, or SATA drives are simply easier to come by and/or cheaper (and will be quieter), you can get one of these and use a torx driver to open the network adapter and swap it in place of the IDE interface board. (You can also get cheaper, premade SATA interfaces, but these lack networking; so avoid these if networking is important to you.)

Then just boot with your FreeMcBoot memory card, load OPL, and select a game.

[fernan1234]

WinHIIP is the old transfer and format tool. HDL Dump Helper GUI is much easier to use, and can format the disk and transfer games directly to the HDD like WinHIIP (HDD can be formatted on uLE), so no need for slow network transfers.

[Lawfer]

Don't you need a hardmod to run games off HDD anyways?

Nope. Just peripherals.

So you can play games off an HDD even witout softmodding?

[nmalinoski]

Don't you need a hardmod to run games off HDD anyways?

Nope. Just peripherals.

So you can play games off an HDD even witout softmodding?

First, yes; that functionality is part of ODSYS that gets installed with the official HDD software, and is usable with compatible software. I'm sure it was used to a decent extent in Japan, but, in the US it was primarily used for Final Fantasy XI and Tetra Master. With FFXI, the retail discs were only for installation; once the game was on the HDD, you would open the system browser, navigate to the HDD, select the game, and launch it. Admittedly, it's a bit of a corner case, because FFXI is an MMO, which uses external user accounts to control access to the game; so it doesn't need to have the disc in the drive to be usable.

Secondly, in regards to FreeMcBoot, I'd hesitate to call it a softmod, because, as I understand it, it simply uses existing functionality to boot an ODSYS over the baked-in one from a memory card, not unlike how the official HDD software loads an HDD-aware ODSYS from the HDD on boot.

And, lastly, there are a couple options that simply boot from the hard disk that don't require FMCB on a memory card. One is FreeHDBoot, which is a hard disk image that effectively loads FreeMcBoot, just from the HDD. The other is a modified version of the official HDD software that has the firmware checks disabled/removed, so it can be run from non-PS2-branded hard disks, and I think (don't quote me) it might be able to accommodate more than the typical 40GB limit. Both of these can be written directly to the hard disk before you install it in your PS2, negating the need to have a FMCB memory card hanging around.

[fernan1234]

The custom ODSYS loads much more quickly from a memory card than from the HDD in my experience, which is why I'd stick with FMCB even though setting up FHDB is trivial.

[maxtherabbit]

The other is a modified version of the official HDD software that has the firmware checks disabled/removed, so it can be run from non-PS2-branded hard disks, and I think (don't quote me) it might be able to accommodate more than the typical 40GB limit. Both of these can be written directly to the hard disk before you install it in your PS2, negating the need to have a FMCB memory card hanging around.

if you're setting up a PS2 for the first time, you should not consider anything else

it's called HDDOSD, does support >40GB, and it makes mcbooting totally obsolete

with or without a hardmod