Modding a PS2 with minimal budget?

I think Winhip can format drives. My PS2 couldn't format my drive directly for some reason, but after with winhip it worked. Just throwing that out there.

 

WinHIIP is part of the tools in that link I posted.

 

No it can't, lol the strain you're talking about is comparable to normal use.
Open up the shell. Boot original game. Once your in the game menu swap disc. Run exploit. No additional strain.

 

The HDD (Primary Master disk 0) is likely dead (note the internal model name that the drive reveals - it might have failed inner tracks and is hence brain-dead), unless your ATA cable is bad or not attached properly.

 

Winhiip isn't detecting the drive according to the screenshot in his previous post.

 

You either didn't read what I had written or you didn't understand what I meant by "triple swap trick".

 

Using the swap trick a few times to softmod a ps2 shouldn't put strain on the drive, but for people who use the swap trick as their sole method for booting copies of games, their drive eject mechanism would eventually become faulty, so not complete nonsense.

As for trying to softmod the ps2 via a ps1 disc, I don't think that would work due to the console 'locking' out the ps2 circuitry during ps1 use.

Best bet is FMCB with OPL, ESR and HDLoader. I can do u a FMCBoot card if u are in UK.

I used swap magic for my mod but I think any ps2 CD game/disc ie twisted metal or a demo disc with a descent TOC and a burnt copy of uLaunch.elf. U can fashion u'r own tray eject card out of an old credit/store card.

Unfortunately there isn't always a way to mod a system with so little cash.

 

It was a general piece of advice.

I only mentioned it since, if this drive is dead any working pull from an old workstation should format fine with it. If I was in the same location as the OP I'd give him a drive.

 

I ignored what that part because no sane person would do that when there are much more convinient ways of approaching the issue. No offence intended.

 

The OP should just send a spare memory card to somebody who can mod it for him for starters, postage or an extra stamp should take care of it. After that, one can chain install Free McBoot by running ulaunch from the memory card, then run Free McBoot from the USB, take out the memory card. Finally plug in a new memory card and install Free McBoot.

I think Microcenter sells IDE hard drives for less than $20 in-store if eBay is not an option. 160GB is an okay size. And it seems for some network adapters, moving the power jack a few cm right or left is rather easy to do for WD drives.

 

I hate how I have so many damn sata drives and not any IDE drives.
damn ET-140 class

 

Maybe post an ad locally on Craigslist (or equivalent) to trade a Sata drive for IDE drive? Often people want Sata nowadays so you might find somebody to trade an equivalent drive for it. If you have any 2.5" Sata drives you can also use one of these:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/OE-SATA-7-15-TO-PATA-IDE-Converter-Adapter-For-3-5-HDD-DVD-/221850003604?

I tried a different ones and they worked fine for PS2.

 

As someone that lives in Cali as well I would be happy to install FMcB on a memory card for you, you would need to pay to the shipping tho but that should just be the price of two stamps afaik since it's not like their big or heavy.

 

maybe sometime in the beginning of November

 

Interesting...does it make the network adapter sit proud of the PS2, though? Does anything need to be done to make it flush with the console?

 

Shoot me a PM whenever to get things sorted out.