2001 Sony PlayStation 2 Upgrades – Free MCBoot, Network Adapter, 1TB HDD

A couple of years ago I repaired my wife’s childhood Sony PlayStation 2, which had stopped reading discs (as discussed in another blog post). This was a temporary fix for the worn out laser, so I wanted to do some modifications to bypass the need to use the optical drive for the most part, including:

• Soft-modding to allow loading from an internal HDD.
• Modifying and fitting an original Sony network adapter.
• Fitting an internal 1TB 3.5″ HDD.

I thought I’d write up a somewhat comprehensive guide as to this process, however information & resources such as YouTube videos & blog posts are readily available.

Soft-Modding

Soft-modding (i.e. the installation of bootloader software) is a common upgrade for many games consoles – for the original PS2 it allows you to bypass copy protection, run custom software and emulators, and upgrade the hardware. Unlike hard-modding (i.e. the installation of a modchip), this can be done without modifying the hardware.

The most common bootloader software for the PS2 is “Free MCBoot” – I decided to use this, as memory cards with it preloaded are commonly available and quite cheap.

Installing the soft-mod is as simple as connecting the memory card in the first slot – it should also still function as a standard memory card for game save data. If it is working, the PS2 should boot into the FMCB menu.

Network Adapter Modifications

The earlier “fat” PS2 was designed with expansion in mind, and features an internal expansion bay suitable for a 3.5″ HDD and an expansion bus connector on its rear.

Sony produced a network adapter expansion, which had an onboard Ethernet interface for TCP/IP networking and an IDE interface for fitting an internal IDE HDD. The problem: IDE HDDs are no longer manufactured, and ones that are available have limited capacity, are slow, and are unreliable due to their age. Modern SATA adapters are available, but they do not feature a network interface, so are not an ideal solution.

I decided to buy an original Sony network adapter, then modify it by replacing the IDE board and power board with a modern SATA board.

This is a fairly simple process: the three boards and their shielding can be unscrewed; the shielding can then be removed from the boards.

The power board (push-fit) and IDE board (FPC) can then be unplugged, and the new board installed in their place – the shielding can then be reattached, which is trickier to get right on the later SCPH-10350 adapter.

The HDD slots into the adapter, which in turn slots into the rear of the PS2.

HDD Preparation

The PS2 can be a bit picky when it comes to HDDs – luckily, there is a community-maintained HDD compatibility chart available.

I chose a Western Digital WD10EZEX 1TB 3.5″ SATA HDD, as I had a couple of these lying around, and they are one of the recommended drives to use in the PS2.

The new drive needs to be formatted for use with the PS2 before it can be installed.

There are several ways of doing this – I opted to connect the HDD to a PC using a USB-SATA adapter, then format the drive using WinHIIP‘s PS2 HDD formatting tool.

The formatting tool allows the drive to be formatted for several different types of HDLoader – I chose the options below.

Formatting may take time depending on the size of the HDD and whether you have chosen a quick or full format – when complete, it will be ready to load software.

Loading Game Images

There are two methods of loading software onto the PS2 HDD.

• #1: via CD-ROM – this requires burning files to CD-ROMs using a PC CD-ROM drive.
• #2: via WinHIIP – this is fast, but requires the PS2 HDD to be connected to a PC.

Game image (ISO or XISO) files for your favourite original PS2 games can be downloaded for free online, from sites such as CDRomance and ROMsFun.

I downloaded the game images I wanted to install on my PC, and used OPL Manager to prepare the ISO files and artwork ready for transfer across to the PS2 HDD.

CD images need to be converted from binary files to ISO files using WinBin2Iso.

Once all of the game images have been prepared, they can be copied across to the PS2 HDD using WinHIIP, as before.

The HDD and network adapter can then be fitted to the PS2.

Games can then be loaded via the programs menu in OPL under Free MCBoot.

With the games library loaded, my PS2 upgrades were complete!