Sony PlayStation 2 fixing frenzy

https://retrohax.net/sony-playstation-2-fixing-frenzy/

by ibobev • 9 months ago

190 129 9 months ago

retrohax.net

neilv• 9 months ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20251013151036/https://retrohax....

RajT88• 9 months ago

Alternately:

https://archive.is/vxjmQ

15 hours later, it still is suffering the hug of death.

protocolture2• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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/

protocolture2• 9 months ago

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.

aidenn02• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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

doubled1122• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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.

hi_hi• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

Was peak MIPS the PS2 or the N64?

bitwize• 9 months ago

The SGI Onyx2

mrpippy• 9 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCI_Blue_Mountain

nebula8804• 9 months ago

Wonder what happened to those computers. Hopefully they were sold on government auction and not scrapped.

xgkickt• 9 months ago

I certainly miss having COP2 instructions.

wk_end• 9 months ago

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.

bombcar3• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

So, what does the analog button on the controller do?

dotancohen2• 9 months ago

Emulate the old D-pad.

ender341341• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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.

chasing0entropy2• 9 months ago

So... What does the analog button do?

dotancohen2• 9 months ago

Emulate the old D-pad.

janmarsal• 9 months ago

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.

chasing0entropy2• 9 months ago

Dope, I guess I never played a PS1 game that was written for DPAD only.

aquova2• 9 months ago

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.

mikepurvis3• 9 months ago

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.

lloeki3• 9 months ago

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.

Tsiklon• 9 months ago

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.

xandrius2• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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_console...

lynguist• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

So it's unrelated to the analog face buttons?

CaptainOfCoit8• 9 months ago

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.

cubefox10• 9 months ago

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.

nemomarx3• 9 months ago

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?

CaptainOfCoit8• 9 months ago

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.

aquova2• 9 months ago

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.

freditup• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

Have you considered emulating instead?

trenchpilgrim2• 9 months ago

There are still many beloved games that don't emulate well.

bombcar3• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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.

rtpg2• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

Sadly, does not ship to the US.

etempleton• 9 months ago

Look for the slim models. They are much more reliable than the standard PS2.

stevenwoo• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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 10€ at a countryside GiFi (French store) ten years ago.

exitb2• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

The base retrotink models work well and are inexpensive.

MobileVet• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

Buy one and replace the laser they are cheap and plentiful

mmarvin• 9 months ago

You could also check out https://ongoldscar.com, sometimes there is a PS2 in the current drop (repaired, certified and with warranty)

a_shovel2• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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_shovel2• 9 months ago

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.

aosaigh2• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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.

aosaigh2• 9 months ago

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?

CaptainOfCoit8• 9 months ago

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.

eschatology• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

Isopropyl alcohol works well too.

numpad02• 9 months ago

I believe isopropyl alcohol is safer for both plastics and humans. It even doubles as hand sanitizer refills!

mschuster91• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

The Transcend consumer cards are/were generally 'hybrids' - they would work in IDE mode if connected to such an interface.

numpad02• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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• 9 months ago

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.

Sony PlayStation 2 fixing frenzy

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