Making The PS2 Slim Better Than A PS2 Phat

foreign [Applause] one of the best things about the original fat PS2 is that it has the expansion Bay for adding an internal hard drive this is obviously great for Homebrew due to the hard drive's high data throughput and compatibility with a ton of games now unfortunately when it comes to the PS2 slim Sony removed the internal hard drive but in some PS2 slim models Sony left all the hard drive hardware intact which actually allows us to install one and with this mod we can do just that and give our slim PS2 a fully functioning internal hard drive [Music] hey everyone how's it going my name is Tito and welcome to another episode of retro renew today we'll be taking a look at what I think is one of the coolest mods for the PS2 Slim this is the IDE resurrector from Gus a simple quick solder Flex ribbon that helps us enable hard drive capability in the PS2 slim with this simple quick starter Flex cable does is tap all the necessary points on the PS2 slim motherboard that relates to the IDE hard drive circuitry yeah that's right in some PS2 slim models Sony left all the circuitry for hard drive support right on the motherboard all that needs to be done is finding those points and connecting them to an IDE hard drive or in our case an IDE converter board and that's where Gus comes into the picture Gus is a modding Enthusiast from France who was a bit late to the PS2 modding scene getting his start modding the original Xbox and GameCube and really didn't pursue modding the PS2 until a bit later it wasn't until 2020 when he started installing mod chips in PS2 consoles with these beautifully intricate wire management after becoming very familiar with the PS2 Hardware he decided to make a mod that would bring back hard drive capability to PS2 slim consoles now reactivating hard drive capability on the PS2 slim isn't anything new in fact it's been around for a while but it's a pain to do requiring a crazy amount of soldering and wiring somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 wires is required for doing that type of mod a quick starter Flex was apparently also created a while ago but was never really accessible or widely available to the public so Gus sought out to create his own quick solder Flex ribbon so let's dive in and take a look at this really cool mod that resurrects hard drive capability in this slim PS2 alright so in this video I'm going to show you all the parts needed to do this mod then I'll demonstrate how to install it go over all of its features review the pros and cons and of course provide you with my overall thoughts so even before we get started you need to make sure you have the right PS2 slim model you'll need an SCP H 70 000 model console so that means a 70 000 two seventy thousand three or seventy thousand one like this one I'll be using for this video once you've got the right PS2 console you'll of course need Gus's quick solder Flex ribbon this again is what makes the install easier and a whole lot more professional looking once installed this also brings me to today's sponsor PCB way if you have an idea for a mod PCB way provides you with the tools to make them a reality from 3D printing services and an array of materials such as this glass-like transparent resin that I used for the PS2 ultra slim mod all the way to other services like CNC Machining injection molding and of course PCB and flex ribbon fabrication so when it comes to taking your Retro Gaming mods to the next level PCB way is the place to make it happen check out the link in the video description for PCB way to get five dollars off your first order and again huge thank you to PCB way for sponsoring this video all right the next thing you'll need to pick up is this IDE to SD card converter this allows us to use SD cards which are a lot smaller than a standard hard drive but will still get the data speed benefits of using a regular hard drive even though we're using SD cards now this next item is optional but strongly recommended this is a Micro SD card slot which will allow us to easily remove and update the SD card without opening up the console so definitely recommend picking this up as well the last thing you'll need are these 3D printed washers and spacers these are needed since we will not be reusing the bottom RF Shield when installing the kit but don't worry that'll become more clear during the installation tutorial portion of this video anyway now that we have all of our parts let me show you how to install this kit all right so the first thing we need to do is of course tear down the PS2 and thankfully this is a pretty simple process the outer shell is held together with only six screws you'll need to remove the screw covers first but that's easily done with a spudger or pry tool [Music] with all the screws removed you can lift off the top shell underneath you'll find a single screw securing the motherboard to the bottom shell in between the two memory card slots next let's remove the power switch ripping cable along with the CMOS battery then unfasten the four screws securing the DVD assembly now let's remove the three ribbon cables for the DVD laser spindle and data lines once they're all removed we can pivot the DVD assembly to the side to expose the last screw securing the motherboard to the bottom shell unfasten it and then proceed to unplugging the fan then carefully remove the motherboard assembly from the bottom shell flip the motherboard over taking care to secure the DVD assembly which is still attached to the RF Shield by one of its ribbon cables on the bottom RF Shield there are four screws that we need to unfasten once they're out we can lift off the bottom RF Shield then flip the motherboard back over and remove the top RF Shield now locate this group of components here near these two chips this is where we'll be attaching the IDE resurrector ribbon after aligning the ribbon I used a piece of capton tape to help hold it in position then I added some no clean flux and began to make all the connections to do this I just add a very small amount of solder to the tip of my iron and then touch the points lightly that I want to solder together this is very delicate work so definitely take your time and if it feels like this is something that you're not able to do I strongly recommend that you seek the help of an experienced modder after completing all the soldering I came back with a Q-tip soaked in IPA to clean up the area and then very gently removed the piece of cap on tape and these are the results next I went ahead and anchored the ribbon to the motherboard by soldering It To The Ground plane [Music] and to Anchor the other side I remove some of the solder mask material with a craft knife so that I could do the same thing [Music] okay now flipping the motherboard over to the other side I've folded the flex ribbon over as shown to continue soldering it in I first tacked in a couple points off camera to hold everything in place and to make soldering the remaining points easier again just a warning this requires very delicate soldering and is fairly difficult to do [Music] [Music] and here's this side of the flex ribbon all soldered in place and of course I anchored this side of the ribbon cable to the ground plane as well I then went back through all my soldering with a multimeter to make sure there wasn't any bridging before proceeding once everything checks out I'm going to prep the IDE to SD converter board first I'm removing this plastic bracing on the pins I'm using my angle tweezers to lever them out once the bracing is removed I put the adapter board onto my PCB holder and then began to remove each of the pins to do this I simply heated the pin with my iron tip and then pulled the pin out with my tweezers this needs to be done to help reduce the thickness of the board so that it'll fit inside the shell [Music] I then removed any excess solder with some wicking braid [Music] now I also have to remove the SD card slot so to do this I simply heat up the tabs on either side with my iron and then gently pry it up with my spudger once both sides have been released I bent it up back and forth until the remaining legs broke releasing the SD card slot I then swiped off the remaining leg material from the pads with my iron and here's what the board should look like with the pins and the SD card slot removed now I also desoldered this activity LED since I want to relocate it to the front of the console so that it's visible later on this is a completely optional step and not necessary at all for the mod now let's move our attention to the micro SD card slot here we need to remove all the capacitors and resistors again I'm just swiping them off with my soldering iron [Music] next we need to lift the last pin on the right while heating the pad I lift the pen up using my tweezers [Music] great now that the micro SD card slot is all prepped I'm moving my tension back to the IDE to SD adapter here I insulated this side of the board using capped on tape to prevent it from shorting on the motherboard then I grabbed the motherboard and place the adapter below the quick solder ribbon and then very carefully begin to solder them together first making sure that they are perfectly aligned [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] and this is the final result next we need to draw 5 volts from this point right here so I soldered a wire to that leg foreign then the other end of the wire will go here on the ribbon cable to the pad labeled 5 volts and here you can see the connection which will power our adapter board now one step that I completely forgot to do was solder a wire to each of the activity LED pads so I peeled back the captain tape and soldered two wires like so each of a good amount of length so we can relocate this led to the front of the console and conveniently I can feed the wires through this hole to the other side of the adapter board next is another optional step the IDE adapter Board needs to be anchored so that it doesn't move around you can either use tape or like me Anchor It To The Ground plane like before I'm using my craft knife to expose the ground plane beneath it and using a leftover resistor leg that I had lying around to connect the adapter board to the ground plane [Music] and the result is pretty solid okay next comes the wiring following Gus's instructions which I have linked down below I'll connect the IDE adapter board to the micro SD cardboard now I chose to do some fancy wire management to make the mod look nice but this is also completely optional as long as you make the correct connections per Gus's instructions you should be good to go as for me I strangely find doing this type of wire management therapeutic as strange as that sounds [Music] okay next we need to attach the micro SD card slot to the motherboard but I want to do it in such a way that I'm able to access it through the vent hole so I place it where I want it to be set the motherboard on top and then Mark the location using a pencil before proceeding I insulated the bottom of the micro SD card PCB using Captain tape then just like the IDE adapter board I anchored It To The Ground plane using some more leftover resistor legs and here's the final result as you can see it's pretty solid even when inserting a micro SD card then I give it a quick test to make sure everything is all aligned and the SD card fits like a glove which is awesome all that's left to do is finish up the wiring to the micro SD card slot [Music] [Music] here you can see the small activity LED connected as well again this was a completely optional step to keep the LED secured I place some capped on tape on the motherboard below it so that it doesn't short out and then used another piece of tape to keep it secured [Music] now we can go ahead and start to put the PS2 back together when securing the top RF Shield I'll be feeding the screw through their designated hole but on the other side I'll be placing one of my 3D printed nuts to fasten everything together it's a bit of a juggling act to get the first couple screws on and you don't want to screw them too tight or you may strip the threads on the 3D printed nut [Music] follow the same method for each of the four other DVD assembly screws [Music] once those are secured we now need to use the 3D printed washers on each of the bottom screws this is to account for the thickness of the RF Shield which we aren't reusing and to hold the heatsink up against the PS2 CPU and co-processor also we're only using three of the four screws since the IDE board is blocking one of them and here you can see everything all secured and ready to be put back into the PS2 shell [Music] [Music] [Music] fantastic once the PS2 is all put together go ahead and insert a blank micro SD card hook it up to the TV and power it on using free mcboot scroll down and open launch elf from here press Circle to enter the file browser and then go all the way down to the bottom and select the miscellaneous folder by again pressing Circle on the next screen select HDD manager once next screen loads we can now format our SD card go ahead and press R1 to open the sub menu scroll down to format and then press Circle and then press Circle again to continue remember we can only use up to 128 gigabyte cards for this mod nice once it's done you can see that it formatted the drive and created a few folders to confirm everything is all set correctly press triangle to exit and then go back into the file browser this time open the folder labeled hdd0 and in here we should see those same folders that were created during the formatting process which we do so we know everything worked perfectly now we can power down the system once the PS2 is off we can remove the SD card and place it into our computer where we'll be loading our games after inserting the SD card you'll get a message asking you to format it make sure to hit cancel on those pop-up messages because you do not want to format it we're going to be using an application called HDL which I'll have linked down below this will be used to add our games to the SD card once it's open press the search for PS2 hard drive button and it should automatically locate and mount the SD card then click the search games button this will open a window browser allowing you to navigate to where your game ISO files are stored you can select one or multiple games but I'll just add Silent Hill 2 for this demonstration since it takes quite a bit of time to install each game once your game or games are selected hit the install button you can see the install progress on the command window [Music] after the game is installed remove the SD card from the computer and then place it back into the PS2 now we're going to open opl from here open settings by pressing start [Music] scroll down to the option titled hard drive device start mode press X and change that setting to auto go down and select ok and then make sure to save your settings [Music] head back to the game list and you should now see the games that we added which in my case is Silent Hill 2. and that's it we have successfully installed and set up the IDE resurrector okay so this mod was more on the difficult side of the scale but honestly I love these results so much not only is the installation clean but having easy access to the SD card through the front vent holes along with the activity LED makes this a super clean almost Factory looking mod and more importantly we have a PS2 slim that has a fully functioning internal hard drive and all the benefits that go along with that essentially you cannot treat this PS2 slim the same way you would an original fat console with a hard drive installed when using free mcboot and opl we can launch games from the SD card because the PS2 is now utilizing its organic IDE hardware and it thinks the SD card is a hard drive the IDE converter board essentially acts in the same manner as a SATA converter board that you would have installed on the network adapter for the fat model ps2s except instead of using a SATA drive we're using SD cards and when it comes to Performance it's exactly what you would expect I've played numerous games and have not experienced any slowdowns or hiccups during full motion video cutscenes this method provides better game playback results than using the USB ports and offers better compatibility than using the mx4 sio solutions both of which I have covered on this channel so when it comes to Features it's honestly nothing we haven't seen before basically we now have a slim PS2 with all the hardware one would find on an original fat model console anyway now that we've discussed what this mod can do let's go over the pros and cons starting with the pros I think the obvious big one has to do with all the benefits that come with having an actual internal hard drive when it comes to Homebrew and using open PS2 loader to play games using the hard drive is arguably the best method other methods such as using the USB to load games has issues at times with playing back cut scenes due to the low data rate of the USB 1.0 Port methods like the mx4 sio have much better data throughput than the USB ports but suffer from some compatibility issues when playing games and the method of using the SMB share over the ethernet port while it does provide you very good data throughput makes you reliant on a separate external piece of Hardware like a PC or Raspberry Pi device in short the internal hard drive at the moment is really the best option when it comes to loading games using opl another Pro is that while this mod is difficult to perform overall Gus's quick solder Flex makes it a whole lot easier although like I said it's still very very difficult Gus actually made a video covering the installation using wires and my goodness the mod needs a lot of wiring even though he does amazing wire management the mod is definitely daunting so a cable like this just really makes things easier and cleaner the other thing that I love about this mod which is really just a small detail is the activity LED it's great because one it lets you know that the mod is working and reading data from the SD card and two it just looks really cool additionally doing this mod leaves the optical drive completely intact and fully operational so you can still play your regular disc based games as well without any issues and the last Pro is that the quick starter Flex also works with other IDE adapters although in my particular install I'm using the IDE to SD card converter the flex will also work with SATA adapters this is great because currently the IDE to SD adapters are capped at using 128 gigabyte SD cards this is limiting in the number of games you can store on the SD card but with a SATA adapter the limit is much higher which is great I'll definitely be doing a video that covers that mod in the near future when it becomes available anyway those are the pros but now let's get into the cons the biggest con is obvious this is a very difficult mod even though we have the flex which makes the mod easier and much cleaner there's no way around it it's a very difficult mod you definitely need to know your way around a soldering iron and I recommend that this mod be done by those with moderate to Advanced soldering skills another con is that this mod Works only with 70 000 model PS2 Slims unfortunately Sony removed all the remaining IDE Hardware with future revisions of the slim models as a cost cutting measure and since the hard drive wasn't really utilized all that much it would have been great if this mod worked with awesome models but unfortunately that's not the case and like I mentioned previously because I'm using a IDE to SD converter we are capped at using 128 gigabyte SD cards this actually isn't too big of a deal since the micro SD card is easily accessible and you can have multiple SD cards to Encompass your entire library and swap them in or out accordingly just make sure the console is turned off before you swap out SD cards also the fact that the SD card fits precisely through the vent hole is just such a cool detail I mean it definitely takes some work to get it lined up but man it's awesome anyway the last con is price the ribbon itself is actually quite expensive at 40 euros but you need to purchase the IDE to SD converter along with the micro SD card slot which brings a total to roughly 65 to 70 bucks so while it is a bit pricey I definitely think this mod is worth it if you want to have the best Homebrew experience on the PS2 Slim [Music] well there you have it the IDE resurrector for the PS2 Slim from Gus a fantastic mod that brings out the full potential of the 70 000 model slim PS2 now if you enjoyed this video I really think you'll like this one so check it out and as always thank you so much for watching and I'll see you all next Thursday [Music]

Channel: Macho Nacho Productions

Views: 374,409

Keywords: macho nacho productions, macho nacho, macho nacho tito, tito macho nacho, ps2 slim ide mod, ps2 slim ide sd mod, ide resurrector ps2 slim, ide resurrector gusse, add hard drive to ps2, add hdd to ps2, install hdd on ps2 slim, ps2 slim hdd ide, ps2 slim ide pinout, how to play ps2 games on usb drive, ps2 slim opl hdd, ps2 slim mod 2022, ps2 slim mod hdd, ps2 slim mod ssd

Id: K_wmKHEcVH8

Length: 26min 24sec (1584 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023