What do you reccomend for the best PS2 and Saturn modchips?
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What do you reccomend for the best PS2 and Saturn modchips?
I never modded my own PS2s, I just used 'HD Loader/Advance' & later ran exploitable firmware from a 3rd party memory card to boot 'patched' game disks on the slim models.
At this time in the console's lifespan though, I wouldn't hesitate throwing a newer 'chip mod pro' in it. They're probably 30-40 bucks, fully functional, and require basic soldering skills.
the consolegoods.co.uk Saturn modchip worked for me, just make sure to tap into the CD power, not the power supply, took me 5 hours of head scratching to figure out the guide was WRONG.
I've heard good things about Racketboy's Saturn mod chips.
didn't work for me at all, I even checked it with a multi-meter. I guess there are slight variations in hardware or something, because the second I de-soldered it, cut and re-stripped the end, and shoved it into that CD<->motherboard plug, it worked perfectly.
If you have a Memor32 or some other (if they exist) USB enabled memory card that handles it's own firmware. You can use Memento firmware & patches to boot patched games or ELF files from USB sticks.
All without opening the console of course, which was the main purpose.
HDAdvance & HDLoader were older methods, designed to let you boot an OS off the disk like a real game (You buy a software disk), put in a game disk and back it up to the PS2 hard drive (if you have the network adaptor & a compatible HDD in it.) These became obsolete when Sony slimmed the PS2 and pulled HDD support.
Both methods were never 100% or close enough to it with compatibility; compared to a cheap modchip solution.
The memento firmware which tunnels an exploit was abandoned by the Russian developers, since the demand wasn't there for it; they also never open sourced it as far as I know so it's dead and unfinished.
Modchip's are the way to go unless you have money to burn and like 'tinkering with crap' more than 'bootlegging games'.
I have a Memor32 and its pretty darn sweet, i use it in my unmodded PS2 to boot HD Loader in combination with a 120gb HD.
I also have a modded PS2 that came modded when i bought it 2nd hand,
I wish i knew what kinda chip it was though.. I tried looking for it when i opened it up to put a new DVD drive in but i just couldn't seem to locate it.
PS2 modchips go on the bottom of the pcb, so you would need take the whole system apart to find it.
I've got a DMS SE Pro modchip in my PS2 slim, along with an set of IDE breakout cables to re-enable HDD support (the support chips are still there in the early slim models, so you just need to wire them up to an IDE socket). This is connected to an external IDE enclosure with a 640GB drive with backups of all my retail discs - everything plays from that, rather than dvd.
The one advantage of a modchip is that most of them have a flashable region that can hold a small number of programs, in my case I've got the Toxic OS app in eeprom, so the system boots straight to the game loader (Toxic OS == very last version of hdloader that was developed and supports virtually every game).
If you're prepared to mess around with memory cards and running soft exploits then you don't really need a chip... but it's more convenient.
I did get a Saturn chip a few years ago, but it turned out both of my Saturns were the wrong type and not supported. I've not been able to find a suitable chip for them.