So I have a PS2, well now it's two PS2's but let's start at the beginning. Got a PS2 for the younger member of the household, and consequently all the discs end up in some toxic waste region of space known as, Kid-Space. The discs were lost for many a long month, until I decided on a plan to get them back into society and feel good about themselves once more.
To get to a stage where the disks were safe, and the games were able to be played requires three pieces of equipment.
1)A standard hard drive. Any size from 40GB up to 120GB, nothing smaller or larger will be recognized by the PS2.
2)A Playstation 2 Network Adaptor.
3)A copy of HDAdvance.
You do NOT need to install a mod-chip, or unscrew your PS2 in any way at all.
HDAdvance is a disk which when you put it into your PS2 and switch on, allows you to see the hard drive installed INSIDE your PS2. Ok so now we have to install the hard drive. It takes moments!
Use a screwdriver to lever off the back panel of the PS2, you are left with a gaping hole. This is where the hard drive eventually goes. Plug your hard drive onto the back of the network adaptor and then slide the whole thing into the PS2. That is it! It secures by two screws, which are on the back of the network adaptor. It takes longer to read this than actually do it! When I did it, I left off the jumper, and did nothing more than take the hard drive out of it's packaging, with no formatting and no other voodoo. The first time it was powered up, was when it was inside the PS2.
Put the HDAdvance disk into your PS2, wait for the really simple screen to appear. Use the joypad to select CONVERT, and it will tell you to insert the game disk. Type in a file name for the game, using the onscreen keyboard, and then let it copy over to the hard drive. Some games can take around 20 mins for this to happen. When it's done, you see the game listed on the front screen of HDAdvance. To play it simply select it with the joypad and press X. The game then runs as if the disk is in there. So after you have done it with all your games, you only need to leave the HDAdvance disk in to get to that menu. If you don't the PS2 acts like normal and will play any game you put in it.
No configoring, no soldering, no cracking the case open etc, the whole thing takes moments to install and get going.
The only drawback I had was that the 120GB Western Digital hard drive I used, seemed to have a little extra spacer between the power socket and the jumper pins (see image below). So I just got a sharp knife and cut some of the plastic away until I could JUST about force the drive onto the back of the PS2 network adaptor. If you don't have that little spacer there, the thing slips on with no problems. The network adaptor plugs move a little to take this into account, but with my drive it wasn't quite enough. We are talking real small here, maybe a couple of millimeters, so digging at that piece of plastic is just to allow the power plug to slip into place. At first I thought I was doing something wrong, but trying another couple of dead hard drives soon showed me how easy it could be. It was just bad luck to have gotten a drive with this little spacer in it.
Click here to see the back of the PS2 Network Adaptor.
If on the rare occasion you find a game does not work, then at the main screen go to the game in question, press SELECT on the joypad, and you can change modes. I have no idea what "modes" are? But for instance, a copy of Burnout 3 Takedown, does not work straight away. If you switch modes 1, 2, and 3, to "on" then it does. Don't ask, I don't know, but it works. So fiddle with the only setting I am aware of, if things don't work properly.
Benefits are that you can leave all the disks in the boxes and the loading times of the games is supposed to be faster. The only downside is that if you play any games online, then you cannot run them from the hard drive, you MUST use the disk. But if you need to you can, no problem at all!
Just dig out some of that plastic and then after a few moments of Hulk type noises you will be ready for heaven.
No comments:
Post a Comment