[HN Gopher] Sony PlayStation 2 fixing frenzy
___________________________________________________________________
Sony PlayStation 2 fixing frenzy
Author : ibobev
Score : 185 points
Date : 2025-10-13 23:02 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (retrohax.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (retrohax.net)
| neilv wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20251013151036/https://retrohax....
| RajT88 wrote:
| Alternately:
|
| https://archive.is/vxjmQ
|
| 15 hours later, it still is suffering the hug of death.
| protocolture wrote:
| Absolute long shot. Say someone had a PS2 Devkit that booted once
| and then never again. Is there a perfect tear down and
| maintenance guide like this with lots of text and pictures that
| people have had success with before?
| uyjulian wrote:
| If the devkit is a DTL-H, the instructions are pretty much the
| same as retail systems. For DTL-T (e.g. DTL-T10000 or
| DTL-T15000), there is lots of info here, including a link to a
| disassembly guide: https://archive.org/details/ps2_tool_guide/
| protocolture wrote:
| Thats awesome. And yeah I have both a TOOL and a TEST, the
| TOOL is the problem child the TEST works a treat. Both of
| them have been officially destroyed and I tend to get a bit
| antsy about letting them show in public.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My PS2 slim still works (I played Teken Tag Tournament last
| weekend). Am I lucky? Anyone know the MTBF?
|
| On the other hand, I don't think I've had a DS2 controller last
| me more than a couple of years, even with light use. I use My
| dual-shock 1 controllers for any game that is compatible with it,
| and they are still going strong.
| sholladay wrote:
| My PS3 controllers are still working perfectly almost 20 years
| later. Yet I've had to replace my PS5 controllers three times
| so far, due to the joysticks not reading their position
| correctly. Each one lasted about a year and a half.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| The 2 OEM Dual Shock 2 I got with my console, worked for 10+
| years right until I sold it
|
| Generics varied in quality vastly but never felt quite that
| sturdy I regret having to sell that PS2, specially seeing the
| current resurgence
| doubled112 wrote:
| My fat PS2 stopped reading discs and was replaced with a slim
| when you could still buy them new. The spindle that holds the
| disc exploded in it over 10 years ago.
|
| I'm not sure what what the reliability is long term, but the
| PS2 is the only console I've had to replace. Kind of funny that
| the replacement failed too. In comparison, I have a working
| GameCube, Wii, and gave a working Sega Genesis to a friend a
| couple of years ago
| chongli wrote:
| What about using it without optical media? You can install a
| SATA mod and use a large SATA SSD and run all your games from
| that. You can even install a nice cooling fan and disconnect
| the DVD drive, giving you a near silent console that should
| last a long time.
| doubled112 wrote:
| This was something I considered, but emulation is good
| enough.
| hi_hi wrote:
| My PS2 Fat still works perfectly. The only difficulty I had was
| getting it running on a HDMI TV, but that was fixed with a
| fairly well known HDMI adapter and inputting of a specific
| controller combo to get it into the correct display mode.
|
| I was kinda shocked to see the state of some of those PS2
| consoles.
| chasil wrote:
| Was peak MIPS the PS2 or the N64?
| bitwize wrote:
| The SGI Onyx2
| mrpippy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCI_Blue_Mountain
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Wonder what happened to those computers. Hopefully they were
| sold on government auction and not scrapped.
| xgkickt wrote:
| I certainly miss having COP2 instructions.
| wk_end wrote:
| It's kind of a silly question, but: when the N64 came out in
| 1996, MIPS CPUs were high-end workstation chips; by the time
| the PS2 was released in 2000, SGI had effectively declared MIPS
| a dead-end and was shipping Intel-based machines. So I'd say
| the N64 wins handily: peak MIPS was a MIPS chip in every living
| room, powering video games that felt like the future.
|
| Even though the PS2 won its generation - and the N64 decidedly
| did not - that was _despite_ and not because of its technical
| prowess; it was a less impressive machine than its two closest
| competitors.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's the whole interesting thing about refighting the
| console wars; the technologically superior option (which you
| can argue about itself) rarely if ever really "won".
| captive5512 wrote:
| So, what does the analog button on the controller do?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Emulate the old D-pad.
| ender341341 wrote:
| Basically acted as a trigger. So if you pressed harder the game
| could respond. I only really remember driving games taking
| advantage of it though, and can't remember the game but
| remember being super annoyed at some action-rpg-like game where
| it used it to differentiate between actions but running into
| issues of it interpreting all of my presses as hard presses.
| MBCook wrote:
| The real problem was that there was basically no feedback. So
| other than a driving game it was almost impossible to know
| what you were doing.
|
| I don't remember ever playing any other games that used it
| besides Gran Tourismo 3. I imagine in something like a
| fighting game it would be too hard to reliably hit the right
| pressure to get the move you want and it would end up just
| feeling really frustrating.
| implicit wrote:
| Some older PS1 games didn't work with the Dual Shock in
| analogue mode. You needed to press the button to disable the
| analogue sticks to play those games.
| chasing0entropy wrote:
| So... What does the analog button do?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Emulate the old D-pad.
| janmarsal wrote:
| Most ps1 games only supports the d-pad. If you have a dualshock
| controller but want to move your dude with the analog stick
| instead of the d-pad, you activate the analog mode.
| aquova wrote:
| I've seen a few posters ask already, so I figured I'd answer what
| the PS2 analog button's function was.
|
| The button switches between two modes of the analog joysticks,
| either to behave with their normal functionality, or to simply be
| a digital input (so just round all movement to either
| up/down/left/right). For PS2 games, you typically wouldn't want
| to do this. Instead, the functionality exists because the PS2 was
| backwards compatible with PS1 titles. The original PS1 controller
| didn't have analog sticks at all, just the D-Pad for navigation.
| After a few years (and the success of Nintendo's N64 analog
| controller) Sony released a revised version of the controller
| that included two joysticks, which their controllers still mimic
| to this day. However, those PS1 games released prior to the
| analog controller wouldn't always behave correctly if you tried
| to use an analog input scheme, so Sony added a mode to allow the
| Joysticks to function the same as the D-Pad, in case players
| preferred it.
|
| Other fun fact, the analog controller was not the same as their
| more famous Dualshock controller. There was a short-lived PS1
| Dual Analog controller which just added the joysticks. It only
| lasted a few months before Sony replaced it with one that
| supported rumble functionality (also after being inspired by the
| N64), this was the Dualshock.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I had a PS2 slim years ago and was annoyed that it wouldn't let
| me use a "dual analog" controller I had kicking around to play
| PS2 games, eg for second player. Seemed like an unnecessarily
| hostile move to force an upgrade there when all the
| functionality other than rumble was clearly present.
|
| But of course it's the same now on PS5. I still have my PS4
| pads and use them to round out 4p couch coop for broforce,
| overcooked, moving out, etc, but actual PS5 games will only
| work with PS5 pads.
| lloeki wrote:
| > actual PS5 games will only work with PS5 pads
|
| So IIUC the PS4 gamepad can be used but only for PS4 games?
| That is ridiculous.
|
| Meanwhile I'm rocking an original release day Xbox One
| controller on a Series X.
|
| That said while I can understand them dropping X360 witeless
| due to protocol changes I'm still bitter that the X360
| _wired_ accessories were simply denied on the Xone, notably
| the whole Rock Band stuff as well as steering wheels.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>So IIUC the PS4 gamepad can be used but only for PS4
| games? That is ridiculous.
|
| It's because PS5 games can use the adaptive triggers
| functionality that is impossible to emulate on the PS4
| controller. For example in Ratchet and Clank short pull on
| the trigger fires the gun, there is artifical resistance
| past that point, but if you pull past it it will fire the
| secondary weapon mode. On a PS4 controller you'd just fire
| the secondary mode all the time because there would be no
| way to find the threshold on a trigger without this
| functionality.
|
| Of course games could be designed around this and support
| both - but Sony avoided placing such a requirement on devs
| so all PS5 games are presumed to be using a PS5 controller
| when going through cert.
| lloeki wrote:
| > On a PS4 controller you'd just fire the secondary mode
| all the time because there would be no way to find the
| threshold on a trigger without this functionality.
|
| Just don't mash the trigger all the way? You don't have
| the haptic feedback of such a trigger wall but claiming
| it's "impossible" is a bit extreme. A nice threshold
| mapping could arrange for that e.g 0-10% dead zone,
| 10%-80% main mode, 90%-100% secondary mode, _ factor in
| rate of press to avoid misfiring main mode. Which is
| probably the logic that it implements already, except
| with probably a bit more leeway thanks to the haptic
| feedback.
|
| "Impossible" would be playing a typical+ dual stick game
| with a gamepad that has none (e.g original PS1 gamepad)
|
| + like a FPS that uses the now classic stick layout for
| quick yet precise movement + orientation
|
| Honest question as I'm curious and don't have access to a
| PS5: what about PS5-only games that happen to exist on
| other platforms that don't have such features? Can they
| be played with a PS4 controller?
|
| Oh and to be clear: it's not a Xbox vs PS thing, I find
| them both equally guilty of excessive e-wasting /
| platform locking, just in different ways.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > Honest question as I'm curious and don't have access to
| a PS5: what about PS5-only games that happen to exist on
| other platforms that don't have such features? Can they
| be played with a PS4 controller?
|
| Games that use PS5-exclusive features when played on PS5
| obviously don't use those features when not run on a PS5,
| if it's been ported.
|
| While your idea sounds neat in practice, with those
| thresholds and such, I'm not sure how practical it is in
| real-life. Lots of controllers eventually start reporting
| somewhat inaccurate values, sometimes rather large
| variance, so whatever you end up using as the actual
| values, they tend to not be perfect for everyone, so then
| the game will appear really buggy, almost broken.
|
| I'm guessing they're favoring "works 100% for everyone
| who can run it" rather than "Kind of works for most
| people, broken for the rest".
| gambiting wrote:
| Ehhh let me put it in a different way - it's not
| impossible, of course. But it's about the fact that if
| someone is using a PS4 controller and they don't know
| about this, then they are going to have a bad time. And
| no dev wants their players to have a bad time, and
| neither does the platform holder. So they would rather
| just say no, you as a dev don't have to worry about this
| - every player will use a PS5 controller, done.
|
| >>what about PS5-only games that happen to exist on other
| platforms that don't have such features? Can they be
| played with a PS4 controller?
|
| Sure, Ratchet and Clank has a PC version now which can be
| played with any controller, including a PS4 or xbox
| controller. Obviously for this version it was remapped to
| make sense when using such controllers.
|
| Again, it's not about actual literal impossibility - it's
| Sony's choice to say "look we want to promote features of
| the PS5, so code your gameplay features to make use of
| the adaptive triggers and we guarantee that every player
| will have a ps5 controller. You don't need to code your
| game to support older pads" - so devs don't. They
| obviously do on platforms like PC where the player might
| be using anything.
| ziml77 wrote:
| What was remapped for PC? I don't have a PS5 so PC is how
| I played R&C:RA and I don't recall there being any
| difference in how the trigger pulls were interpreted
| between having adaptive triggers enabled or disabled.
| gambiting wrote:
| I literally had to boot up the game to check - long press
| on the trigger fires the secondary mode. So basically if
| you press and hold the trigger it will do the primary
| fire then the secondary fire.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| It's totally reasonable to expect the native pad for
| single player games; my contention is more around couch
| multiplayer scenarios. When each pad costs as much as a
| day 1 game, it's a big investment to have four of them--
| so most players have just one or two.
|
| As it turns out, there aren't all that many couch
| multiplayer games that are PS5-only, and a lot of what's
| there is two player only (Diablo 3/4, BG3, Hot Wheels,
| Borderlands, etc). So maybe the whole argument is moot,
| but the long and short of it is that any game which I
| think I might want to play with more than two people I
| buy on Switch instead, since I'm always going to have
| lots of those pads.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| > It's because PS5 games can use the adaptive triggers
| functionality
|
| IIRC those can be disabled at the system level, and when
| streaming a PS5 game to a PS4 guess what, the DualShock 4
| works fine.
| xattt wrote:
| I don't get why backward compatibility is even expected,
| other than a nice-to-have. Historically, gamepads weren't
| portable between generations of systems.
|
| I've got a Logitech steering wheel that I can't use on
| 64-bit Windows because of the way the driver was
| implemented.
| tristor wrote:
| Because we all know that under the covers it's just
| Bluetooth and USB, and they don't have a good reason.
| Especially in Xbox world, where while the hardware on an
| Xbox Series X is more powerful than an Xbox One, the
| software is largely the same.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| The DualShock/DualAnalog were not quite the same as the
| DualShock 2, the face buttons on the DualShock 2 were
| advertised as being pressure sensitive. Some games were
| capable of using this.
| scott_w wrote:
| Funnily enough, this caused issues with PS2 games ported to
| Xbox subsequently. Metal Gear Solid 2 made heavy use of the
| pressure sensitive buttons for weapon aiming vs shooting. I
| recall the Xbox didn't have pressure sensitive buttons, so
| had to do something different to achieve this (I'd need
| someone else to fill in the gaps here, I never owned an
| Xbox!)
| thunderfork wrote:
| The original Xbox actually did have pressure sensitive
| face buttons. Off the top of my head, the only game I
| know that used them is Vexx (which strangely didn't use
| them on the PS2...)
| rideontime wrote:
| Original Xbox had the pressure-sensitive buttons, but 360
| did not, which specifically caused issues for MGS 2 and 3
| in the HD Collection. Twin Snakes on the Gamecube
| suffered similarly, requiring awkward combinations of Y
| and A to lower your pistol or raise your automatic weapon
| without firing.
| butlike wrote:
| THAT'S WHY. As an avid Metal Gear enthusiast during the
| release of MGS2, I remember having nearly-impossible time
| finding MGS2 Substance for PS2 when I wanted to do my
| first real replay way back in the day. I imagine it was
| the more popular version since it had working pressure
| buttons, presumably.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| The PS3 had those too, but they were dropped for the PS4
| and PS5. I did read that it caused a few headaches for the
| classics ported forward.
|
| Speaking of oddball controller features, I was a bit
| surprised the PS5 retained the little trackpad, given how
| little use it seemed to get on the PS4-- even in obvious
| situations like Assassins Creed where you're moving an on-
| screen cursor around a map, but only with the thumbstick.
| xandrius wrote:
| Omg, I remember exactly that intermediate joystick. It was
| lighter than the dualshock, so when you held a dualshock it
| felt cool, especially when it started rumbling!
| Lammy wrote:
| I really like the concave analog sticks on that controller.
| The convex DualShock ones get slippery as hell once the
| controller is a few years old.
|
| The analog face buttons of the DualShock 2 are cool in
| concept but always made me press too hard out of fear of not
| getting up to full speed or whatever in games that used face
| buttons for acceleration (mostly Burnout 3 and Revenge for
| me) https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/List_of_cons
| ole...
| alias_neo wrote:
| > analog face buttons of the DualShock 2 are cool in
| concept but always made me press too hard
|
| The amount of hand pain this one feature all those years
| ago has caused.
|
| To this day I find my self having to loosen my grip and
| press the face buttons lighter because it makes no
| difference now.
|
| (Though PS5 has added a whole new level of hand ache with
| adaptive trigger resistance).
| malnourish wrote:
| I love the adaptive triggers. I have all the consoles and
| a gaming PC and will buy games on PS5 because of them. I
| think it adds an interesting tactile element that also
| improves playability.
| lynguist wrote:
| Same with the original Sixaxis PS3 controller without rumble!
| I liked that lightweight controller a lot!
|
| It was also short lived and replaced with the PS3's version
| with rumble included - they were saying it's because of a
| patent dispute.
| windward wrote:
| So it's unrelated to the analog face buttons?
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| I don't know what "face buttons" are, but the Analog button
| only toggles how the Joysticks work, toggling between sending
| Analog or Digital signals.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| The buttons on the front of a playstation controller
| (d-pad, cross/circle/triangle/square) were pressure
| sensitive on the ps2/ps2.
|
| 256 levels on the ps2, 1024 on the ps3. Few games used this
| outside of racing games, and they were removed from the ps4
| controller. It's most commonly noticed when configuring a
| ps3 controller on a PC.
| cubefox wrote:
| Strange analog stick fact: According to YouTuber Wulff Den, the
| first ever game that used an analog stick for third-person
| camera rotation was only Super Mario Sunshine in 2002. A
| GameCube game that came out more than two years after the
| release of the PS2, and several years after the N64 and the PS1
| Dual Analog controller.
|
| I guess some ideas seem only obvious in hindsight.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I've read some early reviews of a licensed alien shooter
| where they complain about how confusing the control scheme is
| - left stick for movement and right for aim.
|
| Before Halo it wasn't really intuitive I guess?
| cubefox wrote:
| Yeah, that's another point: the modern first-person
| controls you describe were once thought to be
| counterintuitive compared to the old Wolfenstein style
| controls.
|
| A similar point holds for third-person games: Before Super
| Mario 64, all third-person games had Wolfenstein style tank
| controls where left/right rotates the character in place
| and up/down makes it move forward/backward. E.g. Tomb
| Raider or Mega Man Legends. The idea to make character
| movement relative to the camera viewpoint wasn't obvious.
|
| (Though the Tomb Raider developers tried to work around
| this to a degree by fixing the camera behind the character,
| which prevented to most counterintuitive control issues
| Mega Man Legends had, but also meant free camera rotation
| was impossible.)
| ziml77 wrote:
| That's really strange because that setup was effectively
| the default for N64 games. Stick under your left thumb for
| movement and the C buttons under your right thumb for
| camera control
| cubefox wrote:
| It's not strange because it's not really true. The
| default controls both of GoldenEye and Perfect Dark used
| the stick for moving forward/backward and turning
| left/right. Turok did use the c buttons for walking and
| the stick for looking though.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Forgive me sounding like Claude, but you're absolutely
| right! I've played platformers from that era recently but
| it's been a long time since I touched the shooters. I was
| mixing them up in my recollection. The shooters had a
| weird mix and for some reason even though Goldeneye had a
| bunch of control scheme options, none of them let you put
| all movement on one input and all camera control on the
| other.
| cubefox wrote:
| I'm pretty sure both GoldenEye and Perfect Dark had (non
| default) control options where movements were on the
| d-pad and camera on the analog stick. For GoldenEye see
| "Solitaire" and "Goodnight" here:
| https://goldeneye.fandom.com/wiki/Control_style
| nemomarx wrote:
| I also remember one of them having some option to use two
| controllers at once to have two sticks?
| ChoGGi wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Resurrection_(video_gam
| e...
|
| (For anyone else curious)
| nemomarx wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3du770/alien_res
| urr...
|
| and the particular quote I was thinking of for the
| record.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| I don't think that's true, I remember playing both Jak and
| Daxter and Ico in either 2000 or 2001 and I think both of
| those had camera control with the right-hand analog stick.
| cubefox wrote:
| This one says camera rotation for Jak and Daxter is mapped
| on the R/L buttons:
| https://jakanddaxter.fandom.com/wiki/Daxter_controls
|
| But Ico indeed used the stick for the camera:
| https://strategywiki.org/wiki/ICO/Controls
|
| However, I'm not sure whether it was only used for
| horizontal rotation or full arbitrary rotation (arbitrary
| combinations of horizontal and vertical) as in Super Mario
| Sunshine. But it might very well be the first game to have
| that, not Mario Sunshine.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Turok from 1997 let you use the dpad for movement and
| stick to look/aim.
|
| Edit: Oh, sorry didn't see you mention third person.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > This one says camera rotation for Jak and Daxter is
| mapped on the R/L buttons:
| https://jakanddaxter.fandom.com/wiki/Daxter_controls
|
| Seems wrong too, archived manual
| (https://archive.org/details/ps2_Jak_and_Daxter-
| _The_Precurso...) seems to say "RIGHT ANALOG STICK ...
| Camera Rotate/Zoom" under the game controls. I think the
| page you linked to is for another game.
| cubefox wrote:
| I just looked at a few videos and it seems that the
| analog stick does indeed move the camera, though
| apparently only horizontally, not "freely" with arbitrary
| rotations. I'm not sure though.
| aquova wrote:
| I scoffed when I first read this, but the more I think about
| it, the more that might be correct.
|
| Mario 64 had third-person camera movement, but it was with
| the N64's C-buttons, and had fixed angles, not free movement.
| Since it didn't have a second joystick, that rules out the
| N64 (some games did allow you to use a second controller as a
| second analog stick, but I don't think any third person games
| did so).
|
| Likewise, the Dreamcast didn't have a second stick, so it's
| ruled out too. That basically leaves us with the PS1 or an
| early PS2/Gamecube game. Apparently Quake II on PS1 did allow
| for the second stick to aim, but that's not third person. The
| closest I can find is Ico on PS2, which allowed for analog
| stick camera movement, but I think only in the horizontal
| direction. Mario Sunshine might well be the first for full
| camera angle movement, which honestly really surprises me.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Just piling on to say that there was also _Alien:
| Resurrection_ on PS1 that used the modern dual-stick
| movement /aiming setup. It was one of the first FPSes to do
| so, at least as the default control scheme. Reviewers at
| the time mostly hated it and called it awkward, probably
| because they were comparing non-aim-assisted console FPS
| controls to PC FPSes of the era, which is kind of fair tbh.
| The game's difficulty was also probably too high for the
| time, especially given the brand-new control style.
| cubefox wrote:
| Yeah but the comment you are replying to, and the one
| before that, talk about third-person games, not first-
| person games.
|
| Regarding Alien Resurrection: Turok (another FPS game
| which came out a few years earlier) also had modern FPS
| controls as default, though movement was done with the
| d-pad, as the N64 didn't have two sticks.
| cfcfcf wrote:
| And inverted the Y-Axis too, which I still do today
| thanks to this game, I think.
| freditup wrote:
| Does anyone know the best way to get a reliably working PS2
| nowadays? I happen to have a bunch of old PS2 games and would
| love to have a reliable PS2 to be able to use them with. But
| buying online seems fairly fraught - how do you have any
| guarantee you get a reliable device? And they seem to be fairly
| expensive now.
|
| (I couldn't read the article because the site was currently down
| for me, so apologies if this comment is off-topic, but hopefully
| relevant!)
| ebbi wrote:
| Have you considered emulating instead?
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| There are still many beloved games that don't emulate well.
| xandrius wrote:
| Really? Like what?
| WhiteDawn wrote:
| The Stuntman series is a still painful example.
|
| Blame the odd non-IEEE-754 floating point implementation
| changing physics enough that AI fails most of the
| missions which softblocks progress quite egregiously
| Ndymium wrote:
| Made me laugh though, when in the first level that it
| completely blocks, the director tells you to get close to
| a pickup, but the car you're chasing smashes the pickup
| to the sky like Team Rocket.
|
| Last I heard there was a feature branch for testing a
| software implementation of floating point that would fix
| these issues, but naturally it would be a lot slower. I
| haven't tried it myself.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > The Stuntman series is a still painful example.
|
| I tried PS2 emulation just a year to ago, just to play
| Stuntman and found the same thing, painfully slow and
| barely playable.
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| In my case I'm a big fan of Ace Combat and PCSX2 has
| rendering issues in both software and hardware modes:
|
| https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/issues/10976
|
| https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/issues/12173
|
| It's gotten better (no more black untextured planes!) but
| the best experience is still on original hardware.
| bombcar wrote:
| Either spend a lot for an eBay seller that looks reputable or
| find them at garage sales or thrift stores where they're cheap
| enough to buy and try if you can't fire it up there.
| hamdingers wrote:
| If you don't care to do the work yourself, I've bought many
| modded consoles from Etsy sellers and have always had a great
| experience.
| rtpg wrote:
| Mercari + Buyee will get you things that are decent.
|
| Here's just one of many listings. Shipping depends on where you
| are of course. And it's a Japanese model so you'll need to do
| stuff based on that. https://jp.mercari.com/item/m93693596459
| klaussilveira wrote:
| Sadly, does not ship to the US.
| bombcar wrote:
| IF you're really dedicated, you can find Japanese
| reshippers.
| rtpg wrote:
| Does Buyee not ship to the US?
| etempleton wrote:
| Look for the slim models. They are much more reliable than the
| standard PS2.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The author claims they could not find a buyer for theirs but
| they added hard drives to the finished PS2s. Browsing EBay
| finds a plain refurbished PS2 for 160-200 from seller with 99.3
| percent rating with over 1100 sold. The mods in the article
| seem really nice - allowing you to rip games you own to a hard
| drive and play games off the hard drive instead of waiting for
| DVD seek/read times. There are not a lot of details about the
| cost of the mod in article but I'm guessing it would add a
| couple hundred to his sale price .
| johncoltrane wrote:
| The ones you can find online are sold by people who know the
| market all too well so the prices are high. Plus it's online so
| there's no guarantee about anything.
|
| Pawn shops, thrift stores, or their "modern" equivalents
| (EasyCash, CashConverters, etc. YMMV) would be a good start. I
| got mine out of a pile for 10EUR at a countryside GiFi (French
| store) ten years ago.
| exitb wrote:
| I actually have a PS2 and don't use it much, as it's a pain to
| hook up to a modern TV. Most games don't support progressive
| scan, which forces your TV to deinterlace, which im my case
| adds enough latency to make it unpleasant to play. There's some
| boutique hardware that can deinterlace with less latency, but
| then it starts to get expensive really fast.
|
| Ideally you'd have to buy a CRT TV along with it.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| The base retrotink models work well and are inexpensive.
| exitb wrote:
| You mean the 99 USD one? After duties, VAT and shipment to
| EU, it will most likely get more expensive than the PS2
| itself.
| MobileVet wrote:
| Yes! That latency was very quick to induce nausea for me
| while trying to play Battlefront with my son. I thought maybe
| it was just the frame rate... but latency makes more sense.
|
| Thanks for sharing that and solving a mystery for me!!
| rm445 wrote:
| Try a gaming store that offers a guarantee? I don't know where
| you are, but here in the UK, second-hand stores such as Cash
| Converters are full of PS2s, fat and slim. Dedicated second-
| hand entertainment stores like CEX will test consoles before
| buying them off people, and claim to offer a several-months
| guarantee.
| psyclobe wrote:
| Buy one and replace the laser they are cheap and plentiful
| mmarvin wrote:
| You could also check out https://ongoldscar.com, sometimes
| there is a PS2 in the current drop (repaired, certified and
| with warranty)
| a_shovel wrote:
| > Unfortunately, nobody wanted to buy these even for a cost that
| would cover all the expenses spent on this project.
|
| Makes me wonder how expensive these were to make.
| spaqin wrote:
| It's not that they were expensive (the HDD + adapter probably
| being the most expensive part), but rather that the PS2s on the
| used market are so cheap no one was willing to pay the extra,
| even if it's been refurbished.
| Hexigonz wrote:
| He said in the comments on the post that he valued the parts,
| units, and his time at about 100 bucks, and put them up for
| 150, which no one would pay. This was back in 2022ish.
| a_shovel wrote:
| that's less than i was expecting. i was looking for a ps2
| around then and i'd definitely have paid $150 plus shipping
| for all of that.
| aosaigh wrote:
| > Unfortunately, nobody wanted to buy these even for a cost that
| would cover all the expenses spent on this project. On the bright
| side, I have learned a lot, plus, I have a cool PS2 to play with
|
| I'm not sure if the OP is here, but the other obvious way to
| cover costs here is to create Youtube videos of the restoration
| process. I love these (as do lots of other people).
|
| One of my favourites is a power-tool repair technician in
| Ireland:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@deandohertygreaser
| VMG wrote:
| > Some controllers are originally painted with a rubber-like
| cover that, unfortunately, degrades with time and becomes a
| sticky gooey. I usually deal with it with the help of Methanol.
| It nicely removes it.
|
| I have some products like that and I despise them. Maybe I should
| try methanol.
| aosaigh wrote:
| I was going to comment on this too. I notice this happens with
| what feels like more traditional plastics - what exactly is
| going with these? It feels like over time they are breaking
| down and liquefying, or releasing their oils?
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| Same thing happens with a somewhat expensive musical
| instrument brand that keeps using that plastic for their
| buttons.
|
| As far as I can tell, it breaks down _slower_ the more you
| use it, must be interacting with oils /something from human
| fingers, as I only have that happen for things that remain in
| storage for months/years at a time, but the gear with that
| sort of plastic that I use every day/week doesn't have that
| happening.
| philo23 wrote:
| Yeah I had an official silicone iPhone case that was being
| used for about 8 months, replaced it with a third party
| leather one about a month ago and already within that time
| I noticed that the original one has gone all slimy just
| like those old plastics. There must be something about
| using it day to day that keeps it from breaking down.
| eschatology wrote:
| With rubber products, it's usually the plasticizers leaking
| over years. I have learned this the painful way (massive
| migration of plasticizers from the underside of my mousepad
| to other things), and now actively avoid any rubber products,
| usually in favour of silicone instead.
| gertrunde wrote:
| Isopropyl alcohol works well too.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I believe isopropyl alcohol is safer for both plastics and
| humans. It even doubles as hand sanitizer refills!
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Wonder why they used HDDs and not a CompactFlash card - CF under
| the hood is IDE in a different form factor, there's passive
| adapters to IDE, and you can get them new up to 256GB. Or you go
| with CFast, a SATA adapter or just a straight SATA SSD and then a
| SATA to IDE adapter. Far more durable than any HDD will ever be.
| M95D wrote:
| Most CF cards are marked as "removable drive" by firmware and
| can't be changed. I'm not sure PS will accept that.
|
| Industrial CF cards that don't do that are very expensive.
| Paianni wrote:
| The Transcend consumer cards are/were generally 'hybrids' -
| they would work in IDE mode if connected to such an
| interface.
| numpad0 wrote:
| They're fine for data storage, but CF card controllers for
| large capacity(16GB and above) had issues with severe
| stuttering and performance issues in random reads/writes
| causing OS to become unresponsive for seconds at a time if not
| BSoDing - no, they were not instantaneous for everything just
| by being flash based. There were also some problems in some
| SSDs that the SSDs sometimes take much longer than HDDs to
| complete its own firmware bootup process, so much so that BIOS
| might consider the disk broken. Could be those reasons.
|
| Or it could be just that HDDs are still more economical than
| SSDs. About ~2x cheaper for 2.5" 1TB as of now.
| dravenSphere7 wrote:
| That sticky controller coating is like a badge of honor, if your
| PS2 controller isn't sticky, did you even game in the 2000s?
| LocalH wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that was my old "FHDB Noobie Package" that was
| installed to the drive using HDD Raw Copy. That thing has had
| almost 48k downloads. Fun times.
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