After seeing Mr Mario’s softmodding video I decided to dig out my old PS2’s from the box that had as a kid and put some of the old hardware to use. At the same time I was definitely wanting to make these work with modern TV’s as best as I can.

I started with ordering some PS2 hard drive network adapters. Originally intended for use with specific games, the modding community has managed to get it sorted so you can load games and home brew off the hard drive. At the same time of ordering I grab a component cable, hdmi adapter and some wireless controllers. Great tip, the controllers work on PS1 and Raspberry Pi adapters as well!

I won’t bother repeating much from the video as it is far better than I could ever put together, but one thing I never got to work was an HDD larger than 1TB. Every tutorial, blog post and app I tried gave me the same results. I even tried a linux tool with no luck. I went back to a 1tb drive and it has been stable ever since. I actually set up a IDE unit with a 300GB drive and a 1TB SATA drive in it since I had the consoles already and one can log in the games room, the other in the lounge.

All working great after the hours and hours of transferring games was done. You might find some games don’t work and will need to reload the image there. One last note, as mentioned in the video, make sure you use a Magic Gate memory card otherwise none of this works like it should ( most on AliExpress and eBay aren’t Magic Gate ).

Materials/Parts

• IDE and SATA network adapters dependent on your preference or hard drive availability
• Wireless PS2 controllers
• PS2 Component Cables OR PS2 to HDMI adapter
• Genuine Magic Gate Memory card. It won’t work without one
• Hard Drive under 1tb. I tried with drives bigger and it just wouldn’t work.