Upgrading The PS2 For 2022

recently I made a video on the PlayStation 2 specifically this fat model PS2 system in that video I talked about how things have progressed for the platform when it comes to Homebrew scene along with some Hardware today though I wanted to go over how I've mostly completed my ultimate PS2 system I've read through some of the comments and looked a little further into things when it comes to even third-party Hardware that could more or less make this system fit in a bit more with where we are in 2022 guys if you enjoy these videos make sure you hit that like button helps out a ton and if new here to the spawn wave Channel make sure you subscribe it down below so that video people were very very interested in it so I wanted to kind of follow up with things here and there were a few key aspects that I really wanted to hone in on and improve the first one was the noise factor of the PS2 system because it's a pretty loud system All Things Considered especially with other systems that are out now the fan specific typically on the PS2 is the loudest part of it I know the disk drive can get kind of loud too when it's spinning up and reading discs and all of this and seeking on load screens but for me the disk drive isn't really being used much since it's just there to rip games to the hard drive at this time so 20 to 30 minutes It'll be used and then that's kind of it for for the game where it will then default to the hard drive so I had to figure out the fan and wouldn't you know it people already decided to shove knock to a fans into these things and it's actually not too bad you can buy the kit on Amazon it was I think 35 and it got to me in a day or two it was pretty quick and I went to install it which mostly was taking the top off and then realizing that the fan connector runs underneath of the board and it's not something you can get to easily you do have to do more disassembly than I was expecting to where I had to pull the entire shell off of the the metal cage inside and then kind of remove the hard drive cage but I was able to at that time get to the fan connector take the fan out put the new fan in which has like a 3D printed mold around the noctua fan and It just fits in the back but it does kind of stick out which is one of the reasons they had to implement this 3D printed setup once I got it in there and I was able to kind of fish the cable around and I sort of just threw it in the hard drive bay which I'll explain why I have more room in that in a second here but after I did that plugged it in closed it up turned it on I was absolutely shocked I was shocked because the system is near silent in fact it's on right now and I can still barely hear it from here I know noctua fans are are very well known for being quiet but it also moves pretty good air I haven't had any issues with overheating nothing like that and I've had this thing on for hours at a time playing different games so that already is great for the PS2 and is certainly a modification I would look into if you are running a fat model PS2 currently mostly because the fans that are in there are like what 15 to 20 years old might not be a bad idea to change it out with one of these the only thing is the disassembly and the installation process was a bit more than I was expecting I don't think it's like outlandish to do it or anything like that just know you're going to be most likely removing uh the metal cage and the board at least to flip it around to get to that fan connector there was one other part that makes noise inside of the PS2 in that video after I left off and that was the hard drive I looked through the comments so many people were asking me why I didn't use a solid-state drive to be honest the PS2 doesn't really get much Advantage from an SSD mostly because the speeds for transfer from the DVD drive to the hard drive and then loading off the hard drive it's not saturating that at all not even close but I I think there was a good point to be made here when it does come to the noise level since I could hear that hard drive spinning up as it was being accessed so I decided you know what let's put an SSD in there because why not we'll go along with the comments and you know what I'm kind of happy I did while it is a 500 gigabyte Samsung drive that again completely outclasses the PS2 for what it really is able to do it's silent it doesn't make any noise and it just kind of goes along with that knock to a fan in the back I don't really notice too much of a difference between load times for the mechanical hard drive and the SSD I'm sure there are differences especially when it comes to seek times I'm just not really sure what the PS2 would benefit other than maybe a few milliseconds here or there but I guess technically it's one less moving part inside of the PS2 and solid state drives have come down pretty well in price considering 10 or 15 years ago and people were first getting into this free mcboot stuff ssds were much much more expensive so now it's like a 500 gigabyte Drive that'll hold plenty of PS2 titles and it left some room so that I could just kind of leave the the fan Cable in there it kind of worked out all the way around so with the storage and the fan figured out I still needed to come up with a way to get a better looking image out of the system and that was kind of an issue since I still don't have any access to an internal HDMI modification where we're pulling signals directly off of the Chip And then having a board process that so it will look better on a larger display it'll put 1080p out all these different things I've had a pretty good run of them so far with things like the Dreamcast and the Nintendo 64 and even the original PlayStation so I'm hoping we get something for the PS2 here in the near future meanwhile although I decided to go with a retro Tink and I've had people here and there tell me that it is a really good thing to have just overall if you're capturing footage from older systems that don't have HDMI out or any way to get a clean picture I went with the Retro tank 2x it's uh basically a scalar for the system with that I got HD retrovisions component cables for the PS2 kind of plugged it all together as one big daisy chain of of cables but essentially we go from the port on the back of the PS2 to the component in on the Retro tank to then HDMI out to your monitor or in my case capture device and I was pretty happy with what I was seeing here I did update opl as many people were mentioning in the comments on the PS2 it allows you to force different resolutions but when I did that the Retro tank didn't seem to necessarily agree with it or the game file itself that I was trying to run so all the footage you're seeing here here is just the default setting inside of opl and I was really happy with what I was seeing it is a very clean image All Things Considered from where it's coming from with the PS2 but I was going through several different games and several different uh visual Styles and they all just looked great the only issue I was running into is I think the picture was a little darker than I would like it in some games but God Hand looked great which can we get a remaster of God Hand already I'm just just throwing it out there here comes the pain was the best wrestling game you can you can play looks great as well it actually looked pretty similar to my PS3 I was a little surprised actually with that one now I do want to comment quickly on why I chose this retro tank in particular there is a retro tank 5 x and it looks great it has an actual fpga chip inside to do processing whereas what I'm using now is more just a scaler and I thought about getting that but I keep seeing my like on Twitter continue to talk about progress on a 4K solution and I think I'm going to hold out for that one and just stick with this 2x for now also the 2x may fall a bit more in line with someone who is looking at a certain price point specifically to pick up for just like a PS2 when you start getting up to that 5x it does get a little more expensive and you're going to want to have a bunch of systems you can hook up to it to get its full use also there's some pretty good software on the PC that will allow you to move your games to the hard drive and then play off of the PS2 I've been talking about ripping games from the DVD drive on the PS3 this whole time but I used opl manager and that allows you to have cover art go with the games even and then HDL batch installer just had me move a bunch of games over it's an SSD through USB 3 so it was it was really quick to do that and the system sees whether it's ripped from the DVD drive itself or moved over from the PC sees it all completely the same half of the games in that list on opl manager were ripped from the DVD drive the other half were just moved over from PC and they'll play fine well at this point I have a near silent PS2 that plays games off of an SSD I can move them from my PC or rip straight from the DVD drive and then it runs out to my HDMI connection on a large flat screen TV using the Retro Tink 2x but there was still something I needed to figure out and that comes down to the controller because the PS2 controller good controller uh still wired so I wanted something that was Wireless but wouldn't feel like junk since we get a lot of third-party controllers that pop up on Amazon and eBay and they'll promise you the world and you'll get it it'll feel like this cheap plastic toy so I went looking and I found actually in the comment section A couple that were named and after going through them I landed on this one right here that is the defender Wireless Gamepad it's set up for the PS1 on PS2 and the PS3 however I noticed on the back it does mention PlayStation classic switch and PC as well might not be a bad controller I guess for that PS classic now I'm thinking about it it runs through 2.4 gigahertz wireless technology has the pressure sensitive buttons which is something that typically does not uh does not apply to third-party controllers made for the PS2 trying to be that Sony replacement for the system turbo functionality it does have vibration feedback and 30 plus feet for the wireless connection with just over 10 hours per charge I've been using this when I was capturing footage for this video so good bit and it's pretty good like I'm happy with the feeling of it it still has a symmetrical sticks to to keep in line with what you'd expect from a PlayStation controller we have all the buttons here with the the symbols the top is kind of like a like a now like a soft after plastic but a plastic that grips your finger pretty well the back is different texture from the front which is this rubberized matte finish d-pad is solid has a nice Pivot Point here in the middle and they did mention it is set up for the PS3 so you can connect it there if you would like it looks like they also have like a little screenshot button here that being for the switch the sticks have nice tension to them along with R2 and L2 and it charges through USB C so nice to nice to have that connection on there it's always a shame when you get a good feeling controller then you flip over to the top and you see it's using micro USB for some weird reason the controller comes in at 45 dollars but I was sort of looking for a controller that I could make as my main PS2 controller and I'm willing to spend a little more than the cheap third-party ones to make sure it feels solid and this one does so I'm pretty happy with what I have here it comes with two different dongles one that lets you just plug it into your PS2 it's actually plugged in right up here or your original PlayStation otherwise though they have like this USB dongle that you plug in I guess to your PC or you plug it into your PlayStation 3. Now the last thing that I'm thinking about doing with this system is to replace the casing on it and I was trying to figure out how I wanted to go about doing it did I want to try to get maybe a special edition casing to put on here I've seen things like the kind of the Ghost Shell blue online I think that was specific to Japan or maybe find a custom one that's been done as I'm seeing more and more of those shells get out there for different systems and I'm sure the PS2 will eventually get something like that or do I just try to get another all-black shell that is in much better condition because this one it's been through the ringer a bit a lot of scratches that won't come out in all of this so I'm trying to figure out which way I should go with it you know be really cool is if I get that all gold PS2 shell I see those popping up on eBay now and then it really comes down to do I want to try to keep it like a stealth PS2 system still looks kind of stock or do I just go all out and make it some special edition looking system I guess on the back with that fan while it does I think match up better with that network adapter on the back it's still pretty obvious that it's not like a stock PS2 system so maybe I should just go all out with the color choice and ladies and gentlemen that's going to do it here for now my ultimate PS2 system I'm very happy with how this came out how things have progressed for the platform and what we're able to achieve now with some of the I guess newer technology for the fan or even the home brew scene that continues to evolve going forward I think if you're someone who wants to get a backwards compatible PS3 with PS2 games but you're unsure of how well it's gonna hold out or maybe you're getting concerned about yours now this isn't bad actually the picture that's coming out of this PS2 is surprising at times using that retro Tink and with the idea of a 4K enabled retro tank coming up here sometime in the near future I think this PS2 is completely relevant now but let me know what you guys think about this down below whether you're someone who's built out a PS2 and modified one or if you're someone who's looked into a PlayStation 2 rather than rolling the dice on one of those 60 gigabyte PS3s thanks guys for watching and I'll see you next time [Music] thank you [Music] thank you

Channel: Spawn Wave

Views: 558,350

Keywords: ps2, playstation 2, video games, spawn wave, spawn wave media, ps2 ssd, ssd, solid state drive, ps2 upgrade, ps2 fan upgrade, ps2 hard drive, ps2 free mcboot, ps2 controller, ps2 wireless controller, tech wave, teardown, ps2 upgrades 2022

Id: oV-VwD3Q9DY

Length: 14min 34sec (874 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2022