Chinese PS2 SATA Network Adapters.. Network to be trusted or not at all?

Hi,

I've looking for a PS2 Hdd adapter with network abilities.. I've read all the forum posts of how the RJ45 jack has been missing or if its present how its not functional etc..

I've been talking to this ebay seller of SATA PS2 adapters with network interface..

Heres the auction - http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=221037059793&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:US:1123

Seller has shown me its got a RJ45 socket inplace.. but has reassured me that supplier says that network adapter part of it is fully functional.. (Picture on auction is wrong, they sent me real photos of the adapter ouside not inside yet. ).

I would probably prefer a SATA version of the adapter but want to make sure i have a working network interface..
Would this ebay item be safe to buy or are all chinese clone adapters not to be trusted for networking..

PATA is hard to get in 1GB hence better to go SATA I want to achieve 1TB hard inside.

Theres a official 2nd hand Sony adapter for sale near me, but yeah thats PATA and have to hack it a bit to get SATA adapter to fit in there.. then theres the whole ball game and getting the right SATA adapter..

So all in all whats the likely hood of a random SATA adapter to have a fully functional network interface./ 0 or 50/50..

Also are chinese clone too much of a hassle to be worth it.. ie. games compatibility crashing etc..


Appreciate the help! Auction ends in 6 hours for the official one.

 

Oh I was thinking of getting the chinese adapter and if it doesn't work (network interface)... my friend from china is visiting next month so I can get her to take it back to the seller... city nearby..

 

I have not heard of a clone device having a working network interface. It would be nice to be proven wrong.

 

Not sure what is inside the thing but I've suspected its a modified retail network adapter to have an IDE->SATA bridge chip inside. Not sure why that would require the removal of the modem.

Then again I may be underestimating the Chinese.

 

These fake network adapters are built around FPGA chips. Last one I've seen was based around a medium size altera chip and had no network port.

And yes, APE. They have the FPGA chip and an PATA to SATA converter onboard... The one I saw had no network capability even thought it had the socket ... :\

Before that these fakes were built with the same SPEED2 chip (SONY network adapter MAC/ATA/SIO combo chip) that SONY used on SCPH-7000x consoles. And usually these fakes had no Ethernet PHY chip so, no working network port.

 

Why do you need 1TB? Open Ps2 Loader still has the 150 game limit and I'm pretty sure it won't change.

 

So you can fit as many games on it as you could possibly need. Is the 150 game limit hard coded or a technical limitation?

 

It's a limit imposed by the coding on the GUI of the loader program.

Also there's a technical limit on the homebrewn SDK APA driver which limits the highest sector it can handle. But then SONY driver don't even handle drives larger than 137Gb (LBA24 bit)...

 

So, as you can see 1TB is way off the LBA24 bit standard.

 

is that also why the PS2 seems to be hit and miss with different drive manufactures? or is it more to do with the ATA chipset used in the actual network card

 

Has to do with some HDD vendors (Most notorious of them being Wester Digital) having connectors positioned differently than the most and that cause their products to not fit on the PS2 Network adapter.

Being very honest I never had a HDD not work on the PS2. I had cases of the HDD not fitting, though ... lol

Oh and the APA limit problem appears when you try to use drives bigger than 1TB.

 

The LBA standard used by the Sony drivers is 28-bit LBA. The limitation is, like with ATA controllers for PCs, software-dependent.

28-bit LBA will allow addressing up to 137GB.

The homebrew ATAD and APA drivers have partial 48-bit LBA support. The 1TB limitation is caused by bugs in the homebrew libhdd library and uLaunchELF.

The current design of the homebrew ATAD and APA drivers should allow support of up to 2TB disks (To be precise, 2TB - 1 sector, as ATAD has a dirty workaround it's partial 48-bit LBA support).

The PFS driver is 64-bit. However, it's currently unknown whether it actually functions properly with large disks >1TB in size.

If someone was to fix all those bugs and replace the APA driver with a partition scheme that allows true 48-bit LBA, the PS2 will have support for disks even up to 144 PB in size.

I've created a ATAD driver that offers true 48-bit LBA support, but the higher-level software (The APA driver and the user software like uLaunchELF) are not ready for disk sizes >1TB.

 

I know i am bumping an old thread, but just to avoid confusion, i have a 3rd party chinese network adapter which has a fully working ethernet port compatible with the existing softwares on the pc and ps2 side. It accepts SATA disks.

 

could you post a link of the site where you bought it from or even pictures of the network adapter?

 

That actually adds to the confusion, but thanks for the helpful post. Not seeing one of it does not mean it does not exist. Of course ...

 

I am sorry i can't post a link to the site as it was pre-installed on a second hand ps2 i bought.

I will try to post screenshots later.

But the funny thing is it had the same yellow sticker on the ethernet port as you see like the ones in the online stores but unlike them there was ethernet port behind the sticker.

Of course it lacks the telephone port (or whatever it is called, you know what i mean)

 

Here is the pic i promised some time ago. Sorry, i couldn't use the spoiler tag. I took the picture at 5 MP but i think i couldn't succeed the macro mode so it is blurry. The ethernet port was covered with the infamous yellow sticker when i bought it. Feel free to ask anything else and i might try to add better pictures if there is need.

 

Japanese and European ORIGINAL Network adapters do not have modems, they're ETHERNET only.

The fakes copy that design.

 

I actually heard that was the case too....

If you had a fake that had the ethernet connector under the sticker - it would actually work.

They were supposed to be making with with ethernet first, then later took it out and just stuck a sticker over it rather than redoing the cases.

Least thats how I heard it..

 

A lot of the fakes (PATA) use original SONY chips on a fake board.