How the Sony Playstation 2 Security Was Defeated | MVG
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- The Sony PlayStation 2 is still the highest selling console in video game history but like its predecessor, the PlayStation, it was a machine that was easily exploited with security flaws. In this episode we find out the methods hackers used to open up the machine.
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#PS2 #Hacking #Sony - Hry
The thing people leave out on PS2 success has to do with how it was a reasonably priced DVD player as well as a game player.
@Brandon Kick You just disagreed to agree with me... The wording doesn't matter.
@Brandon Kick I wouldve figured they would use the attachable HDD some of the things as well. Guess i was wrong.
Dee Luna he was correcting you lol
Despite it's expensive launch price the PS3 was a pretty good bluray player too. At the time it didn't seem great value as blurays weren't even the dominant format yet, but in retrospective they did pretty good with that. I remember a lot of AV enthusiasts actually recommending it. I still use my PS4 as my bluray player in the living room.
@@sonicwingnut I didnt think people still watched Bluray movies....
I think it's impossible to find a Playstation 2 in Brazil that does not have the Matrix modchip bootlogo.
or in any country in South America lol
@@Dash120z It all sounds like a sensible way to deal with bullies.
But I have one though...
That hasn't been modded...
(I'm Chilean)
same in Argentina, the crazy thing is that every ps2 was sold with, even if you bought from wallmart or some place like that
I do have one, but when i took it apart i found unnamed modchip. Maybe messiah modchip? It was bought circa 2006
WE: DAD gimme a Ps2!
DAD: Why would I?
WE: It also reads DVD Films! And's cheaper than a DVD Player!
DAD: Here is your money, go get it son!
yes but dvd players can play the high resolution of the disc but ps2 cant
Yes I didnt know DVDs could be "read". Normally it's called played.
@@eness379 actually DVDs are only 480p anyway so it works out perfectly
@@nathanurie4686 oof
@@theenzoferrari458 normally your unit has to read the disc in order to be played.... so what is your point dude? #notsosmartafterall
This video inspired me to start buying malfunctioning ps2s and repair them so people can enjoy the ps2 with all the compatibility. Ps2 deserves to live on
I am looking for ps2 to buy, plz contact me if you have any
@@WoundedSnake I have about 10 but only a few are ready for use.
I don't have them listed anywhere bc I just havnt had time.
A working one has fully functional optical drive, mem slots and control ports. Comes with 1 controller, power supply, AV cables and Free mcboot mem card.
I only have slims, so the network was tested too.
I honestly have no idea what a good asking price is. Lol
@@rustyshackleford5166 I actually have my ps3 cracked playing both ps1 and ps2 games
But for pure nostalgia reasons I want to play with ps2 console/ps2 controller
As for where to list them, or how much the price is up to you, which ever is more convenient for you, may I ask where are you from?
Just do a lil search for the current prices and list them with a median one, that's what I would do anyway
@@WoundedSnake I'm in America, specifically Pennsylvania. I have never sent mail in my life. Lol
Are you looking to use free mcboot with network SMB? or do you need a functional unit?
If it's the former I can sell you one with a functional brain for what it was sold to me for plus the mem with FMCB. Lol they already sell on eBay with broken optical drives for around $30 and FMCB is like 10. CDromance is one of the last places to get rips of games at reasonable speeds.
If it's the latter, then it's gonna be pricier. I test all my units and video all of it.
@@rustyshackleford5166 I bought a Fat today for $40 🤣 had to open it up and clean the laser bc the disc would take forever to load.
I see those legendary PS1 disc swapping skills, MVG. 👀
Every time you comment a MVG's video it's like being in a crossover episode.
lol literally 2 days ago i used your video to soft mod my ps2
Hahaha..the skills of the swapping disc jockey...
I did this.
I heard you'll eventually break your laser by putting the extra stress on it by doing the disc swap without a proper mod. That being said I use the disc swap cuz I don't often get into my ps1
1:35 fastest disc swapper in the west.
Turn table origins
Grew up with Sega Saturn model 2. That would probably be the minimum smoothness for the swap trick to work on it. Many disks were sent flying across the room mastering the art of swap.
You could just hear the whip cracks
I haven't laughed so much my stomach hurt in a long time bro you made my day!
It is so cool, so fascinating that we STILL dont know how Daytel pulled this off. Seems like the Bleem case, where turns out the team creating them was more talented than anyone could have expected.
Before Free McBoot, there was something called the 'Independence Exploit', which used a modified title.db file on the memory card to trigger a buffer overflow when a PS1 disc was loaded. It worked on all fat models, and some early slims, I think.
Give me more details
I Heard of that exploit but never seen it in action tho
But I have FREEMCBOOT
I liked the part where he said Sony learned from the mistakes of the PS1.
😂
Still disc swapping smh only now it can only be used to mod games.
Acturally. With incredibly precise timing you can acturally get it to load a different .elf executable :-:
S o n y l e a r n e d f r o m t h e m i s t a k e s o f t h e P S 1 .
I mean, he said they learned, he never said they learned the right lesson though
Y
All hail FreeMcBoot.. still playing PS2 at 2019
Ii caption
FreeHDBoot here - god what an experience. Best console ever.
@@FeeLtheHertZ still got my original HDD from FFXI bundle
@Jenny Rok Yep, I used to actually perform soft mods through HDD upgrades filled with emulators, home-brew and ROMs done via an old DOS box etc. in 2010. In 2004 I was the envy of the whole block with my 250GB mod-chipped all out OG Xbox. Quite the memories.
Hell yea
Yeah, here in Argentina every single PS2 has the ModChip "Matrix". It is almost impossible to find an original PS2 XD
Lol same. In indonesia, if you turn on the ps2, it will showing a "MATRIX" sign first.
@@khairulmufid497 I know right? It's a global chip XD
@@MasterHKS Matrix everywhere
Lmao same in Brazil
Same in Brazil
The jump from PS1 to PS2 was unreal back in the day, playing Jak and Daxter was so epic
The PS2 was the shit back then!
it still is
I remember my mom got me the PS2 because the games were so cheap. Later I found out the games were boot legs since they only cost $10 for 3 disks Because of a mod chip.
@@robsison205tenchu gta 3 vice city god of war 1 and 2 to name a few made the ps2 the best console a must have
I remember reading on AfterDawn, I believe, that Datel had purchased an ass load of cheap, second hand PS2 games and literally cut the watermark section out of them and fused their Action Replay discs to the cannibalized watermark. If I recall, this was discovered when someone put an Action Repay disc into a PC and found a Tony Hawk or Ninja SCUS. Something to that effect.
I’d certainly believe it, considering how jank Swap Magic disks are.
Isn't that illegal?
Heath Mitchell Probably.
Tbh swapmagic was the best thing that ever happened to me in life.
@@circuit10 I'm not sure it is. Because the original authentication, lead-in code, and boot sectors aren't actually touched in any way. If they're just spliced onto another disc, I don't believe that constitutes tampering with the code. I guess it's kind of like an emulator in some way. They're legal because they don't use original firmware or bootloader code, they use their own. The copyrighted media you insert into that emulator hasn't changed or been tampered with in any way, kinda like how you'd run a PS2 game on a PS3. It's like the Wii running GameCube games. The GameCube game runs inside a virtual machine, and AFAIK has no API calls to hardware at all - it all passes through the hypervisor, which provides no access to Wii firmware code.
I hope this helps in some way. I am definitely not a coder, or lawyer, but coding is something I want to learn, particularly reverse engineering.
As a software engineer I absolutely LOVE hearing the technical aspects in your videos. It makes me want to jump in and try stuff, but I don't think I'm smart enough lol.
most arent
Well, you dont lose much from jumping in, just dont get discouraged if it becomes a bit of a project.
Try
Software engineer here as well. Looking back in the past 8 years, the stuff that I'm most proud of was done because I wasn't thinking about the complexity of the project I wanted to start beforehand. Just one step at a time, and before you know it, you'd be surprised at the stuff you can accomplish just by sticking to what you started and going for incremental progress. Give it a try.
Think of what you know already, how you learnt it, and apply it to future things you want to understand.
Free McBoot is just a beautiful exploit. Same with the Wii mail bomb.
I love how it is so easy because you don't have to open up your system or know how to solder shit. That is the only real reason why my old Xbox 360 from like 2007 or so never got modded. Too much of a pain in the arse and too expensive to buy the special chip to flash the dvd drive.
The Wii bomb is actually more difficult.
Now you change your DNS and go to update system.
To easy
Is it really an exploit if it was intentional? Anyhow it seems like when they put it in, they thought they would be completely in control of writing things to the memory card with MagicGate protection set. My CodeBreaker 8.0 disc (and others) said otherwise back when the exploit was first announced. Also apparently their PS3 memory card reader, which with the right crypto key (apparently why the Github repo got quickly nuked), could also write arbitrary files with MagicGate set.
But you know what surprised me about this video? I wanted to see what came between the 20-pin chips and FMcB, and it really was nothing. The recent DVD player exploit was far more clever.
@@kuraiwolf4047 i know right ps2 with fcmb is fuckin amazing i also sold xbox360 slim wtf lol i dont give a shit about ps5 either
Somehow, Playstation and Wii systems are easier to softmod than the Xbox 360.
Sure the original Xbox is easy to softmod, but you needed the original copy of Splinter Cell, and a Xbox USB adapter, so it's must simpler to just HardMod your OG Xbox, lol.
Upcoming video: How the PS5 security was defeated
😳
That'll probably be far in the future.
@@IndellableHatesHandles yeah, probably.
Why should be "far in the future" if we already have the best people specialized in hacking and homebrews? Let's do it now!!!
@@ionutvas6514 yessir lets do it!
'Mistakes were made'. Yeah, that is basically my life
Same here. Hate my life...
mistakes were made 9 months before i was born
Mistakes into Miracles
I know that feeling.
*HAPPY LITTLE ACCIDENTS*
0:08 - Ahh the PS2.. While we are at this timestamp here let me just point out something...
That little P logo on the console there on the disk drive could be turned clockwise so it matched the vertical position and vice versa for the horizontal position.
That was probably the coolest part about the ps2 for me when I was a kid, because none of my friends knew about it lol.
I just thought it was broken
Additionally, the Sony text was presented so when it stood vertically it would emulate one of the Sony headquarters buildings that has the Sony logo in the same place.
I thought it was is obvious and everyone knew it, I saw some stupid tic tock mentioned it recently.
@@disco7379 Biscuits 🍪
That red screen of death probably freaked out enough kids to never even try playing backup games anyway.
I get the read screen at least once when I load up crash bandicoot, I don’t play it much as it takes forever to read. Don’t know if anyone else has this issue
Mission Accomplished!
@@AutizmChan2005 do you mean crash bandicoot for the ps1?
@@Isafell2001 Well, The Wrath of Cortex yes..
@@AutizmChan2005 oh, that’s ps2. but it’s a cd based game so some models of the ps2 struggle to read them after a while, do you have a fat ps2?
That is THE cleanest PS2 in someone’s home I’ve ever seen
PS2 was my childhood. My stepdad's brother gifted me a swap disk/card and a binder full of backups.
Lol. My cousin had a fuckton of backups. Hundreds of burned copies. I remember one time we were playing GOW all night. Many afternoons were spent with Battlefield 2:MC, Soul Calibur 3, SOCOM 2.
damn thats awesome
„Backups“ :D
Sean Price I’m assuming you bought your ps2, so you didn’t rob Sony, you robbed the game developers. Lol
@@abysmal not really, the PS2 (and 3 and 4) were sold much too cheap. Sony makes money by licensing to game developers. So you rob them, but who cares. :D
I remember my mom screaming why TF I'm playing with the PS2 lit open 😂 Swap Magic 3 with uLaunchELF burned on a CD was my first contact with any homebrew scene.
The song from 2:06 - 5:44 is My Eyes - Nero just in case anyone wants to know, it was bothering me for ages
Thanks 👍
Great Song😍
5:04
I think I like that Italian court.
"console owners have the right to modify their hardware once they have bought it."
10:26
Ahh, Call of Duty 2: Big Red One and Call of Duty 3. Those were the days. I always felt so upset when Vic and Brooklyn died.
@oH well,lord! Actually Italia was right, that's what's Italy is called in italian.
I think some time later, the USA courts ruled something similar. The hardware belongs to the purchaser. Any software, however, they only have a license to use.
Keep up the videos MVG! Your videos are very good an informative, always watching the new content :)
8 almost hours and this comment has more than 130 likes
was expecting a mention of the 007 agent under fire swap exploit for installing freemcboot to an ordinary memcard
Or the PS1 Game Exploit
The 007 hack is what I used lol
@@rafaelfrequiao The Independence Exploit was cool but required Action Replay or Codebreaker. The 007 elf trick was eaiser and works with other games. I used SOCOM 2.
That same game and that same hack is also used for installing a custom dashboard on the Xbox.
Y'know that's the exact method I tried and no matter what I did it would not work. I think it had something to do with the boot disc that I burned, as that was the only variable I could see, everything else seemed to be in order. But after several attempts and not being able to find any exact answers on the forums, I gave up.
Glad I watched this. I'd love to know more about my modded PS2. I think we took my original PS2 to a computer fair, left it with a guy for a couple of hours and then collected it. It still works to this day and plays copies and all region games. Don't think I've ever had an issue with it in 19 years. I have no idea what the guy installed but its clearly a mod chip and is pretty quirky. From memory, it boots backups fine but in order to boot games from other regions and PS1 games (oddly), you have to reset the system and hold the power button down until the PlayStation logo appears. Other than me knowing its modded it shows no other signs.
Back in 2003, I ended up getting a program that could run on unmodded original consoles, called "HD loader". All it needed was the original network adapter (which was super cheap as they were not popular here) to then plug in an IDE hard drive which sat in the allocated bay inside the PS2. The program also made use of the network adapter by allowing you to hook up to a PC to transfer games over to the HDD this way. It also allowed you to insert discs into the PS2 tray to then copy direct to the HDD. This was revolutionary for me at that time, for some games like DBZ budokai; as I remember the disc load would literally take a minute or longer to go from player select to battle, down to about 5 seconds running on HDD. I've still got my console. Havent used it in a while. HD loader came with 2 discs of the same thing, one was CD rom, the other DVD. It also came with specific guidance around games on "DVD9" such as Gran Turismo 4, saying that it needed to be ripped to PC first to combine the layers.
Bought a FAT PS2 on December 2018, added the HDD mere weeks ago and i cannot stop playing it. My PS3/4 are eating dust.
Gang gang im happy im not alone
You can jailbreak your ps3 to play all ps1/2 games too
@@RealShadowfiend180x how?
@@britf1859 Hack ps3 its easy
@@alucard-zh7nd But how do i do that? I have a ps3 old fat one that have a disc line that games go into.
It's kinda mindblowing to me how you're able to speak so succinctly and deliberately using accessible and easily understood verbiage while having a ton of significant and fully legitimate actual programming/homebrew scene expertise under your belt.
I remember struggeling to finish the first level of my swapped and modified 007 Agent Under Fire version to trigger the FMCB install exploit :D
I was so bad at this game I needed 5 attempts :'D
Oof. At least you don't need to do that again (or even anymore, provided you have a DVD Writer/Burner)
I remember on my original PS2 i had a boot disk that i would start up the PS2 with, it also came with a plastic tool that was designed to slide underneath where you inserted the DVD, you then used the tool to pull the DVD drive open with and swap in your burned DVD. Super cool videos, i remember taking my PS1 into a local 'computer fair' to have a mod chip installed in the very early 00's.
Those days, every 2nd Saturdays of the months my parents would bring us to the mall, and we would buy 4 games (2 for me, 2 for my brother). By the time we come back to our house, it's already night time and we'd go to sleep. The next day, we would WAKE UP EARLY to play the games we just bought. We'd normally play for 2 hours each then play a co-op game. Now, we play games online. My brother from his dorm room and me from my house, can't wait for this spring break for him to come home and we can spend time together again. As i just bought a second switch.
Dang you must live in a rich family lol
That's like 500$ a month for gamesn
Damn rich boi
2 games every other Saturday? lol fuckin' rich bitch
Excellent video. PS2 was a HUGE chunk of my early teenage years. I've dabbled with emulators, but we all know the performance just isn't consistent enough. Really considering picking a slim up from eBay and jumping back in to the authentic PS2 experience.
10min of google make me think that that DATEL:
1) had a glass master to stamp the wobble. OR
2) reversed engineered the glass master. OR
3) had in house capability to read and then burn this wobble once they got the oscillations measured. OR
4) spliced wobbles from PS2 games into their device so that they did not need to have fancy equipment. OR
5) They could have used a PS2 disc and microscope to view the wobble, take measurements and create a function to generate this path. Then used this to create their own burner that will have this oscillation built in.
Datel aka Thin Ice Media has their own cd pressing plant so with that you already have the physical capability of pressing on the whole disk surface including the wobble area. Oh how awesome it would be if they would accept jobs for small runs of indie games
@@ruhl_funtime5933 I think Datel are on thin enough ice (and they apparently know it!) with getting sued as it is. Their products all enable piracy as a more-or-less main function. Used to be in the past that the crime of piracy was committed by the user every time they did it, now laws have changed and being involved in the supply of piracy tools is also generally illegal. Like with Nintendo 3DS SD-card pirate carts being banned in some places.
Circumventing eg Sony's security to allow unlicensed indies to publish would be asking for more trouble, for little reward, they just don't need that. Besides which you can just burn an indie game yourself and run it with your Datel Pirate-O-Matic.
Datel has the defense that there products are intended for allowing you to cheat in games not for piracy xD
Also pressing indie games would be like one of the legal uses for such a thing since you own the fucking rights to the software on there.
Here in Brazil even some big retails sold unlock ps2.
Haha, land of Odebrecht. Fight the power 🤘
I believe the law requiring things to not be locked meant they found the easiest way was t put a chip... lol
Same here in India
What do yoy mean uncklock?
@@xamergt
Unlocked for backup game disks
btw, few years ago I did bought one with the Matrix modchip from a retail.
I was expecting you to talk about Matrix Infinity that was the most famous modchip in Brazil, nearly every PS2 in my country has this modchip and i kinda wanna know How It works
One of the best chips in the market, since alot of chip broke in 2 years the laser.
Exactly, matrix infinity it was unbeatable
@@milhouse777 but its was expensive, the best part is that you could lauch elf files from memory i belive
The matrix was also very popular here in morroco
@@damianqqqqify I second this, every ps2 in argentina, every single one had/has this chip. But mostly are clones (you couldn't play ps1 games, except on the original chip).
I absolutely LOVE these style of videos that you have been doing lately. Awesome man. Please do more. Much love.
There used to be another method, you used to have an original PS2, and you would need to buy the network card which would also allow you to plug in an IDE hard drive, you then needed a certain game, I believe one of them was 007 but you could then boot games from the hard drive.
In north america, we got that DVD update as well. I had the IR remote with the DVD update patch. I think a few months later they stopped the sale and updated the PS2 to have an IR sensor built in, and at that point if your ps2 was too old, you couldn't use the remote.
Amazing information!
Here in brazil the console still being sold everywhere, and we have some other options for modding it like a purple bootdisc that works like the dreamcast (IIRC it is a hacked SwapMagic, It only boots CDRs and because of this CDR-RIPS were rampant. We even had GTA3 and Vice City burned on CDRs haha), but after the release of the Thunder 2 Modchip and a flood of Matrix Clones I had never saw this disc for sale at the flea market anymore.
Thanks again MVG!
Can you talk about the HDloader? It was the first way to playback ups off a PS2 hard drive that I'm aware of, and it came on a regular PS2 disk.
I feel like that was an important part of the history of this.
Which later was also known as HD extreme and USB eXtreme!
Id say those fit under his bit about Datel disc's having a copied lead in disc track. Those predated the free mcboot existing as stamped boot disc's you did not swap but allowed HDD booting way back in 2004/2005.
And HD Loader doesn't even need a Free MCBoot memory card
Still got my HD Loader and disc swap tool. :)
HDLoader had competitor, HD Advance, which allowed larger hard drive and ps1 backups. Have then both and still use them on my fat ps2's. Only thing is you need the ethernet adapter to connect the hdd. HD extreme was more finicky with ps2 slim using usb and imho, didn't work as well
Not really noteworthy.
Ooh, really interesting! Also envy the apparent Japanese launch unit at 3:34 - Does that still work fully? I've heard these really early units have a lot of laser and overheating problems.
I recognize a certain Nitrax owo
These Japanese units are much tougher made than the later American and European units. These JP units are much, much heavier and don't have a Expansion bay, but a PC Card Slot.
Thanks for the update... :) Never heard of FMCB and OPL, simply didn't follow the PS2 development the last 10 years... But it got me excited, so I woke up my good old fat PS2 (SCPH-30004) and took it out of its warm, dry storage.
I modchipped the console over a decade ago, so everything else now was a breeze: Burnt a uLaunchELF boot DVD, threw it in, and installed FMCB and OPL onto an old memory card. My PS2 reloaded... Almost forgot what an awesome system it was and still is... Greatness never left!
Drove me nuts until I could remember! Music is Nero - My Eyes for anyone that is interested.
Really been enjoying your content lately mate. Doing Aussie content creators proud.
Yooo, I remember years ago, I downloaded Free McBoot onto a 1 gb USB, then I had to do a glitch with a “State of Emergency” save file I believe. It ended up installing it on the memory card.
I remember having to do a swap trick somewhere in there too.
I was using the credit card tool.
I don't even remember how I did the shit lol. 10+ years ago!
You were using what was called the "Slide Tool". It was used for running the Swap Magic software (as well as the Breaker Pro) on the earlier, fatter PS2 models. I used the same method.
Yeah, this was what you had to do to swap discs on the fat consoles. You had to take the front face of the drive off, and cut an old credit card into a specific shape that would hook onto the drive's internal locking components.
Using this, while the console was on and reading a disc, you could "slide" the tool in the console's tray, pull the entire mechanism to the left unlocking the tray and separating the disc from the laser assembly, and then pull the tool out to force the tray to come out without the console doing anything - At which point you could swap in a different disc without the console knowing. The tool lets you slide all the components back into place aswell, so regular operation can begin again with the swapped disc without interacting with the console.
This is how I managed to install FreeMcBoot on my memory card from scratch, with a copy of 007 Agent Under Fire, and a modified backup of the same game that replaced the driving level with an ELF launcher, letting me run the FMCB installer software off a USB thumbdrive.
I'm surprised this method isn't covered in this video.
The steps were something like this
Play a PS One game
Create a Save Game
Save the ID of the game on a ISO that would patch the save file
Cog swap the PS One game with the ISO and patch the save file, saving some .elf in the memory card
The .elf loaded a homebrew version of swap magic and when booting the PSOne game
Remove PS ONE Disc with cog swap
Insert PS2 Disc and read its TOC
Remove PS2 Disc with cog swap
Insert Backup PS2 game
Once the memory card had the .elf you only did the swapping, saving lots of money on modding (and games) lol
You're a lifesaver! I am currently waiting to renew my driving license and queueing takes long. This might be the solution for the boredom
I still have a PS2 with the Messiah 2 modchip and it still runs PS2 backups like a champ.
I remember modding the PS2 in 2003. Before the mod chip there was a popular swap method with the action replay where you pop off the dvd tray bezel and slowly open the tray by turning a gear with a small flat head screwdriver.
I didn’t realize there were cd/dvd limitations with that method, but I definitely remember heavily transcoded (or removed) cutscenes to get games to fit on a cd-rom!
This is the method I used until Free McBoot
You have a great way of explaining things and keeping your audience interested. Thank you for these videos!
My favourite way of installing FMB was to use a trigger disc.
years ago I had a program that took the ID of an inserted PS1 game and injected it into a PS2 save file along with ulaunchELF
So what would happen is: each time that particular PS1 game was inserted into the PS2 and ran, it would boot into ulaunchELF
and from there on I installed FMB
Ah yes, the good old Independence Exploit :). I used it on my system up until recently, before switching to FreeHDBoot. I believe I kept all of my exploit-related files, for nostalgia purposes, hehe.
There is nothing quite like playing PS2 games today. Despite the limited hardware, a lot of games still hold up to this day and are still really fun. One of my favorites is Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero. You also made me want to revist GT3 and GT4
I used swap magic with my slim to play the beatmania IIDX series. I didn't have an aftermarket lid, I just jammed the tip of toothpicks in both lid sensor switches so the lid always appeared closed. The middle "sensor" you highlight is actually just a braking mechanism for the disc.
When I was younger and this was brand new, we always referred to the "watermark" as a bad sector. All we knew was the legit discs started with a sector that couldn't be recreated on our Plextor burners. The good old days, when you needed to install a SCSI card just to run a CD burner. How long did people argue about whether you could get away with using IDE rather than SCSI? You were badass if you owned an Ultra 2wide SCSI card and a Plextor 8x burner. I still look at progress bars and wait for the 0 to become 1% so I know the drive isn't going to kick the disc out. It's like a mild form of PTSD. Thanks Goldenhawk! ;)
Thanks for all these MVG, they're always ultra interesting! 👌
awesome vid again mate. Such high quality content, love it
I had one of the early PS2 slims when they came out in Japan, specifically a Japanese one! I can't remember what brand the "mod" was, but, it was very similar to this in that I had to glue 3 pieces to disable the hardware sensors and use a boot disc to play region 1 games on a Japanese PS2 slim. I believe we ordered it from England, and it was a beautiful thing! Ah, the good ol' days.
I was living in Tokyo at the time, FYI.
Hah... Just the other day, I was going through a box and I found the Swap Magic tray tool I'd made for my PS2 fat, cut from an old gift card. I eventually got a flip-top mod case, but man did seeing that stupid piece of plastic really take me back! 😂
I had a Swap Magic that let me use the stock Slim DVD Door. Just moded the switches and sensors that told the system it was open.
OPL with ethernet is pretty amazing. You can use it to play Japanese games you've ripped and patched for English at full speed with very few issues. Shadow Tower Abyss is what I tested with and it works super well.
How?
@@RobertusWE SMB or samba. you can store games on a computer in the local network and play them that way
Some games have English patches, you take the patch data and a rip of a game and use a tool to smash them together.
Your channel is pure GOLD! So glad I came across it's all I could expect from a HQ-content gaming channel as I see it. Keep up the good work =)
I finally did it. I dusted off my PS2 and got FreeMcBoot installed! MVG, you'll love this: My SwapMagic disc supports USB, but none of the drives that I have worked. So I dusted off my PSP and used that as my USB drive! It was an adventure, but after getting OPL setup on the network, I may never need my swap disc again!
I must have used a much older softmod method. It required patching a file inside the memorycard so when you put a specific PS1 game it would boot an elf loader. From there I could launch a disc swap program, or hdloader. I also had an action replay elf file, but what I did was had it modified so instead of launching a game at the end, it would launch HDLoader so I could boot games off my hard drive.
Just fighting today with an SDXC install on a PS2 Slim V12. ;) In the end using Modbo, FMCB and OPL with a MicroSD card on an IDE to SD Adapter.
I got a bucket load of Original copies, but playing from HD is so much more convenient.
I bought the SwapMagic 3 DVD with the DVD drive because I have a NTSC-J game for the PS2 and obviously an NTSC-U PS2 is region locked so that helped. One thing I learned about SwapMagic 3 is that it can also open ULaunchELF using a flash drive. I was able to use this method to dump my PS2 bios to my flash drive (using BIOS dumper) and use the bios on PCSX2. This was before I even heard of the FreeMCBoot softmod
Good stuff MVG. I always enjoy these look backs! I still have a messiah in my ps2 😁
About the Swap Magic: If I recall corretly - they just cut the security ring from a Crazy Taxi discs and somehow pressed/glued it together with their own.
All of your videos always look very entertaining yet informative. Thanks
Your content is amazing, you should be really proud of what you are doing for the gaming community. Carry on, sir!
I'm going out today to buy a PS2 and all the old Tiger Woods games since his major comeback. Great video. My favorite console ever.
Get them for the og Xbox if you can would be much advice, PS2 controller and tiger Woods games do go together to well.
I owned HDLoader, with the little plastic thing to eject the HDLoader disk and install ISO's onto a drive. Loved it
Awesome video! Nero music playing on the background was equally awesome (and somewhat distracting :P)
Love your CBM 1702/1701 screen, looks amazing.
Aw I was hoping you'd show footage of a FAT PS2 and load some games off the HDD. USB 1.1 is a bit of a bummer for loading games since it can be slow and compatibility isn't as great as HDD loading. HDD loading isn't perfect either but my go to for playing games with faster loading. Keep up the great work!!
Great vid btw, I would like to see a psvita security breakdown from you, thanks beforehand
The original memory card update was for playing DVD movies since the earliest consoles did not have a built-in DVD player. That’s also the reason Sony stopped releasing updates on memory card: DVD playback was built in before the international launch. Pretty sure this is also why ESR only works with FMCB and only works with DVD titles: The ESR patcher changes the media type from DVD-ROM to DVD-Video, making the PS2 look to the memory card for an updated DVD player. That’s where it finds ESR, which it boots in PS2 mode with full access to the PS2 hardware. Since it isn’t actually DVD playback software, it just bootstraps the game on the disc instead. ;)
When you have a *very* large number of people with the same goal, the masses can become EXTREMELY crafty. These DRM topics are always so interesting. Great video MVG !
ps: The emulators are getting really good now...
I always find your videos fascinating.
I really like these videos, though I'd love if you could incorporate some more technical details. Cheers mate!
Use to use swapmagic for ps2 slim for my borrowed games, cost 40£. Good little mod. Awesome vod MVG as always!
I hope there are more videos about the modchips. I bought my PS2 with modchips already included on the console, I think it was around 2003-2004, it ran pretty well.
The graphics look great....who needs a PS4
people who wanna play online
@@texasgun2731 you can play ps2 online lol
I'm with you. If I still had mine, i'd be playing it nowadays, with demos and games. Good times.
@@drd5455 servers are dead
@@seagawk1254 xlink kai, xbslink host ps2 there some others as well but I can't recall the names
Them disc swapping skills! :P There's obviously a lot of experience at play here ;-) hehehe
I remember in the 80's before Datel was big going to their offices in Stoke-on-Trent and getting a action replay for the commodore 64. In them days stores were so naive, i used to go into WHSmith who at the time sold BBC mico, spectrum and commodores. Id plug in the action replay and do a straight copy of the game in memory onto a 5 1/4 inch disk.
Good times lol.
I had a chip called ripper3 (ver 1.4 if I remember right). That was supposed to be the best trying at the time. Worked for many years. Then I bought a network adapter and put a HDD on it. Then I had just a bootloader on a dvd to launch ISOs from the HDD, which was also making games run MUCH smoother, reducing loading times insanely, and making the unit quieter
here in brasil every PlayStation 2 that i ever saw has the Matrix Modchip, its a very popular modchip here
I'm absolutely loving these videos mvg
I remember buying the SwapMagic kit for my PS2-Slim, it wasn't 100% reliable but far less work than having to mess with all that soldering. Didn't need to change the lid it had pieces that disabled the eject sensors instead. Some clever engineering.
One of the PS2 Slims, has the IDE pins on the motherboard. So i personally want to get get one of those PS2 Slims and solder in an IDE SSD. I think that would be pretty cool.
Still playing my PS2s. Still great as they ever were!
Hell yeah! ps2 for life!
Shadow of the Colossus does run better when loading via OPL SMB since the texture streaming depends a lot of the access times.
Bully is one of that benefits from improved access of SMB too. It has a horrendous initial loading originally and on SMB it is near instant to start
I used the disc-swap method relentlessly for import games. Don't forget that back then it took months to a year or more for a game to come out in the US after its initial Japanese release, and often times that time was spent making changes so we didn't get the same game but translated. I remember the US release of Final Fantasy X was so late after the Japanese release that a second version (Final Fantasy X International) came out in Japan and worldwide outside of the US before we finally got the initial game. We did eventually get the International version with the PS3 HD remaster.
Did you have the slim PS2 case mod, or did you use the slide tool? I used both. Played a lot of Melty Blood and Beatmania. 😁
I see that OSSC in the background! Good stuff.
PS2, the golden era of gaming.
Was way before the PS2.
@@Sirdiggar I personally liked Gen 4, but that was just me.
Gen 1 - No experience
Gen 2 - Only experience is finding an Atari when I was older, not fair for judging.
Gen 3 - My childhood generation, I'm going to find it fun no matter what.
Gen 4 - Nintendo improved (now that it was actually challenged by someone) and churned out some amazing shit. I didn't own a Sega personally, though my friend had one and meh, he had mostly sports games which I did not like. I played the Genesis later as an adult and experienced much better games on it. Still biased to the SNES in the end though.
Gen 5 - Awkward transition phase, very hit and miss imo.
Gen 6 - Solid generation imo, gamecube was meh with hardware, but had fun games, PS2 was all around good, I didn't own a Xbox, but playing it at a friends I didn't see any major issues.
Gen 7 - Honestly this was kind of a "pick your poison" for me, 600$ (PS3) vs. Meh (XB360) vs. Gimmicky (Wii).
Gen 8 - My this point I was "PC Master Race", though my little sister got a Wii U, so I played a bit of that, was fun though it kind of felt the same as the Wii only less gimmicky (I was not a fan of motion controls, so I liked it more)
Gen 9 - I have not played any, I don't expect to play consoles anymore.
@@DrewPicklesTheDark Gamecube was meh with hardware? It literally is more powerful than the PS2 and Dreamcast.
BaldyAir Kid fax
@@Sirdiggar PS2 era was biggest eva period..
My personal favorite:
PHAT PS2 with FreeHDDBoot on a SATA converted network adapter using an SSD.
SSD is a bit too much i think, ide isnt that fast to handle its potential
I'm thinking about a ssd in mine just for silence and reliability not keen on the sound of hdds
I would take hdd because most current gen hdd's are silent too
Yup, the network adaptor was the best investment. Having all of my games (especially the legit copies) on my hard drive was great. No more disc swapping, no more fucking Sony dead lens problems.
My PS2 already had a bigger and faster hard drive than my Xbox 360 XD
The middle "sensor" in green ring is not a sensor but a break to stop the disc from spinning when lid is open. And ESR patched disc will also work on modchip.
I really enjoy your videos. Thanks for being awesome!
This dude keeps me up at night. I love this series