Lately, I've been annoyed by my PS2's DVD drive constantly whirring and seeking, and intend to switch to a phat model so I can run things from a HDD. Now, while those are less noisy than a DVD drive, there's still room for improvement, and since it's possible to use SATA discs with (very specific!) adapters in an XBOX, I thought maybe putting a SATA SSD into a PS2 might just work. Anybody tried that yet?
Good idea. If only CF cards (at least the larger ones) weren't that expensive... But since I'm not the type who wants to switch between 20+ games all the time anyways, I might just do that, thanks. In regards to SATA adapters, I've been doing some googling. Some people have tried it (just not with SSDs), and there's apparently been a decent amount of success with Marvell-88SA8040-based devices: http://psx-scene.com/forums/f98/sat...-network-adapter-68515/index2.html#post610301
Yeah that's why I got SD SATA adapter. http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?48051-PS2-Slim-with-SATA-SD-Adapter SD IDE adapters exist too, but I do not know if it's controller works well with PS2 and if they are capable to read big SDHC cards.
If you want it quiet then buy a slim and either stream the games over Ethernet, or get the ide/sata external drive kit. A fat ps2 will always be noisy.
Not really, you can change cooling system. And late fat models aren't too noisy either. But SSD is a huge waste of money - you won't hear 2.5" low rpm HDD unless you want to use working PS2 as a pillow. Streaming over ethernet sounds like good idea, but only if you have a PC or NAS in other room.
It is slower to stream, but the low cost and convenience of using an unmodified slim is worth it for playing the odd game that doesn't use too much streamed video. If I were to play more games and want them to load faster than from DVD then I'd get an external ide/sata kit. My fat PS2 is pretty late I think, but it's still horribly noisy. It's worse when the 3.5" hard drive spins up though, the case appears to be specially designed to echo and amplify the sound of the hard drive. I have a 2 bay synology under my TV and it's pretty silent, especially when compared to a fat PS2. I use it for streaming movies to a PS3 and the NAS is quieter than the PS3.
I've always just used cheap 5$ sata to usb adapters from ebay with 2.5" drives. Never had an issue. Even did an internal mod and added an extra usb port strictly for loading games onto the drive, this way I never had to pull it out of the system. Did have to to a bit of modifying but well worth not having to take out the drive.
Same here, mine's just a cheap, off the shelf, 230-ish GB hard drive, and it works very well and I don't recall hearing it. You can also play games directly from a USB stick (I don't know if you still need a network card present to play from USB stick, but the USB stick itself just plugs into the front of your fat PS2, under the first memory card slot), and it's silent (since the USB stick has no moving parts), but the USB will only read at USB 1.1 speed, as that's the hardware limitation of the PS2's USB ports, so it's not much faster than reading from DVD (the hard drive is much faster, of course).
