Hello, I recently acquired a working ps2 tool kit off of ebay for reasonable price and unfortunately it has the PCI-586VE-S Card with the Socket 7 Intel 233MMX and 2x32Mb 72 pin EDO Memory sticks. From what I've read so far on this forum is that this card is very slow when compared to the more desirable PCI-815VE Socket 307 Celeron 533Mhz and 128Mb of Ram. Sadly the PCI-815VE is rare and usually it can't be bought for a decent price that is assuming your lucky enough to find one. So my idea is to replace/upgrade the current SBC (Single Board Computer) PCI Card to a similar or faster card such as one of these below; 1. ROBO-6711VGA - Features; - mPGA479M socket to support 533/400MHz FSB Mirco-FCPGA type Pentium M and Celeron M type processor - Support DDR 333/266/200 SODIM module, up to 1GB system memory and integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2.0 with DVMT (Dynamic Video Memory Technology) that ensures the most efficient use of system memory - Support dual display over VGA, LVDS interfaces - Equipped one Giga Ethernet port on-board - Audio out, Watch-dog timer, Type II CompactFlash socket, 4 USB 2.0 ports - One 40-pin IDE channel and one 44-pin - IDE channel (dedicated for 2.5” hard drive connection) 2. Advantech PCI-6881 - Features; - Intel Embedded new generation Pentium M (Banias) LV/ULV or Dothan Processor, up to 2.0 GHz - Fanless operation at 0 ~ 60° C (PCI-6881F-M0A2 & PCI-6881FG-M0A2 & PCI-6881F-S0A2 & PCI-6881FG-S0A2) - On-board PCI VGA/LVDS display - Supports 1000Base-T Ethernet on board - Supports 4 x USB 2.0 ports - Supports 2 Channels 36-bit LVDS for LCD - Supports 400 MHz Front Side Bus - Accepts 128/256/512 bit technologies DDR 200/266/333 DRAM up to 2GB 3. EmCORE-i6319 - Features; - CPU Socket 370 for Intel Celeron, Pentium III, Tualatin - Chipset VIA CLE266 and VT8237 - Bus Clock 66,100,133MHz - L2 Cache Integrated in CPU - BIOS 4Mbit PnP Flash BIOS - System Memory 1 x 184-pin DIMM sockets Maximum of 1GB DDR266 RAM Note; For greater detail look at the manuals online or some websites. Note; Any one of these can be found on ebay for under a $100 or more. So what I'd like to know from anyone who has a deep understanding or an idea of how the ps2 tool kit is designed why this may or may not work. If this is not possible due to design or hardware configuration then please do explain to me in detail and to others who are might interested in the same idea as me why. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
The PC in it is slow, but shouldn't be much of a problem because it serves as a communications processor. If you put a board in that is too new, I don't know if the ancient version of Linux on the TOOL will be able to properly control the new peripherals.
Hello, everyone it has been a few months since I last posted on this thread during that time I have been working on a project which I hope to reveal sometime soon. Anyways I recently bought my third tool kit from a seller who I had bought my second one from about a month ago. While the 2nd one did arrive unharmed since he packaged it perfectly with the double box, white peanuts, & bubble wrap. However this time he decided for whatever reason to not use the same material as before and instead he only used card board and news papers. It was so bad even the ups guy knew something was wrong due to the box rattling. He even asked me if I wanted to return it I told him no because it's from a different country and they're hard to get a hold of. After taking of some chores I decided to go ahead and disassemble it following the same guide I've used in the past. While doing just that I discovered it was equipped with the SN Systems DVD emu PCI add-on I was so happy, but also so disappointed with the bad news I'm about to tell you. After inspecting it for broken traces or cracks I found none on the back plane nor ps2 motherboard all diagnostic indicators showed green. So far everything seemed to be in working condition. It wasn't until I turned it on with the VGA plugged in the computer side reported no operating system was to be found. Here is where the major issue beings I discovered both hard drivers were declared dead. Due to this unfortunate predicment it now has no os to utilize my dvd emu add-on or the tool kit so for now it is nothing, but paper weight. So if there's anyone here who by any chance has an image or can image their hard drive with the proper drivers please let me know. I would be forever grateful for your help so my tool kit can see another day. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to read this post I really do appreciate it.
Sadly I cannot help you as I sold all my TOOLS years ago. However, I believe AG member unclejun made an image of the HDDs back in the days, I suggest contacting him to check if he still has it laying around. Ontopic, we had this same discussion a long time ago, sadly nobody tested this. While we didn't really see why this would not work, eventually we only did CPU and memory upgrades which worked as expected. If you are buying a whole new board, I would however as mentioned for the sake of driver support stick to a card from around that time period and similar components. Now while I do understand why you would like to do this, you must ask yourself what you are going to use the TOOL for nowadays. When the TOOL was relatively new the PC part hardware was still somewhat relevant, I wanted to create a more powerful Linux workstation/PS2 console. Today however you will just have a ancient PC running an ancient Linux which makes a hell of a lot of noise and takes a lot of space. Unless you really want to do dev, this is more of a - because i can - thing. The more desirable PCI-815VE, was just desirable because of the luck of the draw when buying a TOOL and because it was easier upgradable - only for the sake of being upgradable.
This thing isn't even worthwhile to be upgraded because you won't even notice a difference under normal usage. You're not supposed to be logging into the PC side of the TOOL, so you wouldn't even get to feel the direct effects of having a more powerful PC side. IMO, such an upgrade was, and will always be a "because I could" thing. If you have the Pentium board, you should get unclejun's HDD images. Otherwise, I could send you a copy of mine (for the celeron 566 model), although my logon password was already tampered with by myself because I really did not know that nobody was supposed to be logging into the PC of the tool. :/
