I Built A PS2 Portable - The PS2 Eclipse

Hi I'm Ginger, and this is the PS2 Eclipse. But you can't be here yet. You need to head  back to 2018 to see where this all began. This tale begins with a spur of the moment  purchase of a ps2 setup off of eBay. I was hot   off the heels of my first portable wii disaster,  and was considering making the ps2 my next victim.   I'd never owned or even played a ps2 but  it had a few games i was interested in.   When the console arrived I did a bit of research  into the process and then, like all good hobbyists,   put the project on a shelf. For three years  before seeing it again and deciding that I   should really just do something with it. Now that  the awkward guilt of an unfinished project has   set in the first step here is to get this ps2  motherboard shrunk down as much as possible   this means violence as this board isn't going to  get any smaller without cutting parts of it off   i would still like to keep this board alive  though so i need to figure out what's actually   safe to cut and just like in all things  the easiest way to figure something out   just let someone smarter than you figure it out  first in this instance that person is g-man a   long-time portablizer who back in 2017 declared  a ruthless war against the secrets of the ps2 and   came out of that conflict as the clear victor from  his efforts came the definitive ps2 trimming guide   a document which covers trim lines and wiring  points on certain ps2 slim models so now that   i'm armed with this knowledge a ps2 motherboard  a dremel and the necessary safety equipment it's   time to actually cut this big guy up now i'm a  pretty seasoned veteran of the console trimming   sport i've built 50 portable wiis in just two  years and i've dominated the coming in second   place category in many of the portable building  contests i've entered so trimming this piece of   cake yeah i botched the trim the dremel bounced  hit this thing and the board doesn't boot anymore blood for the blood god so back and i went  with a new ps2 board but this time the cutting   process went smoothly leaving me with this  board that still boots after being trimmed   with this success it's time to begin  work on the housing of the system   even though the ps2 board is trimmed it's still  the largest thing i'll have to design around   so i picked a screen with similar dimensions  to help decide the shape of the overall case   i actually started a design  that uses this screen last year   so i tracked down those cad files and decided  to use them as a base point for this project   from there i've worked to select components that  fit inside the rough shell and slowly fleshed out   the inside while doing periodic test prints to  make sure i'm still on the right track once i had   a design i was happy with i fired up my printer  and tried to do the final print the front half   turned out great but these grips on the back make  it so i can't get a print that leaves both sides   of this piece looking clean since my own printer  isn't up to the task i've gone ahead and ordered   the back from a company with a fancy enough  printer to do it justice while working on the case   i also adapted some open source designs from gman  into five custom circuit boards i'll break these   down pretty quickly as i understand that this  part isn't super interesting for most people   with time starting now this board houses the ps2  controller emulator this board has some controller   buttons and all the necessary circuitry to handle  converting the raw sound signals from the ps2 and   audible sound through speakers or a headphone jack  these boards have a few more peripherals for the   ps2 controller headphone jack and extra buttons  for controlling other assemblies in the portable   and this final board handles the storage for  ps2 games as well as usbc fast charging and all   these boards are manufactured by pcbway who's been  generous enough to be the sponsor of today's video   pcb way is a great circuit board manufacturer  whose products i've used for several years   their boards are high quality price as low as 5  bucks for 10 boards and come in many different   colors so you can almost always get your boards  to match the rest of your project and i know that   for many of you custom circuit boards might be a  bit outside your interest range but how would you   feel about getting something 3d printed maybe even  in all clear i've been trying to find a place that   can do good transparent prints at a reasonable  price for years and pcbway has finally delivered   if you've got a project that you'd love to have in  clear or even just something dumb like a prop for   a dnd game then plug your stl file into their  3d printing page and place an order with these   settings so thanks again to pcbway for sponsoring  this video and manufacturing all of these great   boards for me oh ah not this though this is  just the board from a ps2 memory card but it's   an important memory card as this is what allows  the system to run games without the disk drive   on this memory card is a program called free  mcboot which allows homebrew programs to be run   on a ps2 including ones that let you run games  off of the usb drive rather than the disk drive   i've gotten a lot of what i'll call constructive  feedback on my portables that run games from usb   rather than the disk drive so i'll  quickly explain why i have to do this   the first reason is because this entire portable  is smaller than a disk let alone a disk drive   and i think i'd prefer to supersize my fast food  orders rather than my portables the second reason   is that a disk drive uses up a lot of power like  as much power as a ps2 motherboard does on its own   the goal here is to make a system that's as  small and efficient as possible and a disk   drive will do nothing but hold you up in those  regards which is why you won't find any modern   portables that accommodate them last ingredient  to this ps2 soup is the ps2 pms a gman board i   bought which handles all the voltage regulation  and charging stuff needed for the system to run   i've got to let my soup simmer for a while  so i'll take this time while i wait to do   a paint job i've decided to paint it completely  black because i don't own any black portables   and i can only get these ps vita buttons in  black in order to prep the case for painting   i'll first wet sand the outside of the shell  with rough sandpaper and then move to smoother   and smoother grits to make the finish as clean  as possible once it's completely even i'll hit   it with a coat of primer followed by a couple  coats of metallic black paint and finally a   smearing of clear coat to help keep the paint  from fading away with this color scheme in mind   i've decided to name the project the ps2 eclipse  because that sounds edgy and cool much like myself   so with everything all laid out i went  ahead and proceeded with a final assembly   this process went perfectly there were zero  issues i did not have to troubleshoot various dumb   things for days and at the end of all that not  troubleshooting i finally have a working system   it's time to close it up and show off what it can  do and who could have guessed it plays ps2 games   although it turns out there's  no mario games for the ps2 so the portable actually plays these ps2 games at  full speed because that's the whole point of   using the original motherboard in here there's  no emulation here only perfect compatibility   and the screams of the damned i've started a  playthrough of kingdom hearts on here and this   game sucks but the portable is doing a great job  of running it the audio system in the portable is   fantastic with full digital audio the two speakers  on the front and the headphone jack on the bottom   the bottom also has buttons for controlling  the volume and the settings of the screen   moving to the back of the portable we've got  two air vents to prevent it from melting into   a pile of goo as well as two thicker grips to  help make the console more comfortable to hold   on the top there's an led to indicate the battery  level of the system as well as a usb-c port   for charging and data transfer by plugging the  portable into my pc i can use it as the world's   most over engineered usb drive or i can just  add new games in homebrew to the internal memory   there's a variety of homebrew softwares  i've been experimenting with including   emulators for other consoles so once i played  through all 4000 ps2 games i can rest assured   knowing that the portable can  still play super mario world and lastly the portable gets about two and a half  hours of battery life which isn't anything crazy   but it's enough time to work through most  of the bizarre plot of super monkey ball now this all looks great but is the project really  perfect yes you [ __ ] never speak to me again but   if there were a few things that could be critiqued  then i guess i would start with the loading times   usb loading is the most convenient method because  of how simple it is literally just four wires but   it does come at the cost of slower load times and  occasional jittery cutscenes this is just because   the ps2 uses usb 1.1 which is a usb protocol  that's older than i am i'm not bothered too much   as i've never experienced the normal load times  on most of these games and i'm the kind of guy   to skip any cutscene i can but the slowdowns  can be particularly brutal on some titles   an issue that's bugged me quite a bit more is the  fact that the controller doesn't get recognized on   quite a few games it's not a permanent issue  as i'm sure someone will eventually take the   time to figure out why this happens and release  a fix for the code for now though if there are   any of your favorite ps2 games that you haven't  seen featured yet it's probably because trying   to play it resulted in a screen that looks  like this and one minor thing i'll address   the switch joysticks as they are notorious  for drifting i'm well aware of the issues   that these sticks have but i honestly have yet  to wear out the sticks on any of my portables   and even if it happened i'd much rather open it  up to swap out the joysticks once every six months   rather than trying to design a portable around  these beasts and finally to answer the question   i'm sure many of you have commented without  watching the entire video how much to buy one of   these from me one million dollars this is because  i'm tired of taking commissions on portables   i've done 50 of them in just two years and while  i'm thankful for the opportunity i've had to do   this for a living building that many portables  to order is just miserable so starting now i'm   going to try to make the switch to making a living  off of doing videos over new projects rather than   being a portable producing robot i will probably  still do some sales on some portables for a bit   but these will be ones that i choose the theme  and design of myself and only put up for sale once   they're completed if you'd like more information  on what the portable buying process is like then   feel free to check out my website gingerofmods.com  which covers the process in detail   there's also a page on there that will point  you to resources to help you get started on   your own portable projects if you'd like to  support me my content endeavors then thank you   the best way to do that is just by subscribing  because that helps get my videos in front of   more eyes and draws the interest of potential  sponsors and if you're rich then i've also   got a patreon with the discord server where i  post updates and ideas about upcoming projects   and i think that's all i've got my next project is  going to center around the gamecube i've got a few   ideas it should be really cool once it's finished  thanks for watching i'll see you again soon um yeah looks like art to me

Channel: GingerOfOz

Views: 1,489,890

Keywords: gingerofoz, ps2, portable

Id: LQ7x2b6BlHk

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021