zenon
Well-Known Member
A friend of mine ordered an HD Loader disk a few weeks ago. He jsut got it recently and we got his PS2 all set up this weekend. It is seriously the greatest thing ever and I can't believe I didn't know about it 'till now! It is possibly the coolest accessory for a PS2 and definetly unleashes tonnes of potential!
The ingredients required:
- PS2 system (of course)
- any spare IDE hard drive (we used a 40gig)
- PS2 Network Adapter
- HD Loader Disk
You simply connect the IDE hard drive to the Network Adapter, slide it in to your PS2, and load the HD Loader Disk (even though Sony packages a hard drive 'designed' for the PS2 with FF11, it's just a standard desktop IDE drive). It brings you to a simple boot menu - you take out the HD Loader Disk, insert any PS2 game (they say 95% of games work, the only one we've tried that hasn't worked is Contra), and select 'Install'. You wait for 5-20 minutes while the data is copied, and then you have a permanent 100% image of the game sitting on your hard drive! :shock: Games seem to vary between 500mb and 3gigs of space on the drive - older games like Midnight Club take up just over 500mb, new games like SSX3 take up 3gigs.
Whenever you want to play a game on your drive, you insert the HD Loader disk, it brings you to the boot menu and you select 'Play'. Because the games load directly off an internal hard disk rather than an optical drive, load times are nearly eliminated. On SSX3 (which has some ridiculously long load times), you don't see a loading screen for more than 2-3 seconds. It is absolutely stunning. Also, in Gran Turismo 3, some of the loading screens don't even show up!
If you want your PS2 to work normally, you simply just stick in the game you want to play. It loads up normally - there isn't any sign that there is a hard drive sitting in your PS2 at all.
This could be of course used for vile, evil purposes (*cough*) such as copying games you don't own onto your hard drive (*cough*), but the usefulness of it is mind blowing. I'm definitely ordering myself one immediately!
We got the disk through Console Source, and it seems to be the best place to buy it from. Find it here: http://www.consolesource.com/ecomm/customer/product.php?productid=1926&cat=&page=1.
The ingredients required:
- PS2 system (of course)
- any spare IDE hard drive (we used a 40gig)
- PS2 Network Adapter
- HD Loader Disk
You simply connect the IDE hard drive to the Network Adapter, slide it in to your PS2, and load the HD Loader Disk (even though Sony packages a hard drive 'designed' for the PS2 with FF11, it's just a standard desktop IDE drive). It brings you to a simple boot menu - you take out the HD Loader Disk, insert any PS2 game (they say 95% of games work, the only one we've tried that hasn't worked is Contra), and select 'Install'. You wait for 5-20 minutes while the data is copied, and then you have a permanent 100% image of the game sitting on your hard drive! :shock: Games seem to vary between 500mb and 3gigs of space on the drive - older games like Midnight Club take up just over 500mb, new games like SSX3 take up 3gigs.
Whenever you want to play a game on your drive, you insert the HD Loader disk, it brings you to the boot menu and you select 'Play'. Because the games load directly off an internal hard disk rather than an optical drive, load times are nearly eliminated. On SSX3 (which has some ridiculously long load times), you don't see a loading screen for more than 2-3 seconds. It is absolutely stunning. Also, in Gran Turismo 3, some of the loading screens don't even show up!
If you want your PS2 to work normally, you simply just stick in the game you want to play. It loads up normally - there isn't any sign that there is a hard drive sitting in your PS2 at all.
This could be of course used for vile, evil purposes (*cough*) such as copying games you don't own onto your hard drive (*cough*), but the usefulness of it is mind blowing. I'm definitely ordering myself one immediately!
We got the disk through Console Source, and it seems to be the best place to buy it from. Find it here: http://www.consolesource.com/ecomm/customer/product.php?productid=1926&cat=&page=1.
I'd really like to see that, because as of right now that's impossible.... :? There has just recently been a semi-successful emulation of a Dreamcast (just the basic boot screen\front end). I hightly doubt there is going to be a PS2 emulator for quite a few more years.
