I've just stated in another thread that I might post a tutorial on softmodding fat PS2s... and after a few clicks around other threads I thought I may as well in order to prevent anyone cracking open their PS2s with angle grinders just yet! There may well be a tutorial on here already but I couldn't find it and so here's mine... How to Softmod Your Fat PS2 DISCLAIMER I DID NOT INVENT THIS SYSTEM YOU FOLLOW THIS TUTORIAL AT YOUR OWN RISK I WOULD NEVER DREAM OF ATTEMPTING TO RIP OFF A BIGWIG COMPANY SUCH AS SONY AND OBVIOUSLY DO NOT ENDORSE ANY ILLEGAL ACTIVITY... Intro: Softmodding is a way of modifying your PS2 without the need for opening it up and soldering all sorts of stuff together. I have seen kids as young as 8 grasp the concept of softmodding pretty fast... so no excuses guys/gals. This method lets you do all sorts of cool stuff such as emulating SNES games and ripping your PS2 game discs straight to your installed hard drive (don't panic we'll cover that too!) so you can play them without the disc. Ripped games play alot smoother than the original games, no skipping, shorter loading times, and it saves your laser reader in you PS2 as it isn't used apart from when you boot up! Sounds good huh? Well lets get cracking! What you need: -PS2 console (original chunky one, none of this slim nonsense) -IDE hard drive (I have been told that PS2s only accept 40-120GB but I had no problems with a 320GB) -PS2 network adapter (these are quite hard to come by nowadays but I picked up one on eBay for cheap cheap cheap) -PS2 memory card -Action Replay Max (again eBay or Amazon is the way to go) -Flash drive -PSone disc (most will work, it is only used as the trigger disc (if that doesn't make sense yet don't panic)) Installing the hard drive: Take your IDE hard drive (referred to from now on as HD) and first of all make sure it fits the expansion bay at the back of your PS2. If it does, thumbs up, if not you're gunna have to get another one that does I'm afraid unless you fancy cutting up your network adapter and making an alternate arrangement for your HD... which is fine, if not a bit messy! Assuming it does fit just slot the HD into the network adapter, Maxtor drives fit the best I'm told where as Western Digital are the hardest to fit. [NB - I bought a 320GB HD from Maplin for £50 (CHEEEEAP) but found I had to open the network adapter and widen the 2 connectors that join the HD. Anyone wanting info on that just PM me] That's all there is to it! Exploit - Step 1 We want to be able to launch our own ELF files. An ELF file is basically like an EXE file, but for a PS2. Choose a PSone game (referred to from now on as trigger disc). Most will work, although I know Duke Nukem games can be troublesome. Now insert the trigger disc into the disc drive on your PC. Download and extract IDGET and Titleman Frontend . Open IDGET, choose the drive your trigger disc is in, click Get (this is the ID of your trigger disc). With IDGET still open, open Titleman Frontend and click Create TITLE.DB. In the bottom right put your trigger disc ID and click Add Exec. You will now find a file in the same directory as Titleman Frontend called TITLE.DB. Download a file called exploit.max. Download and extract PS2 Save Builder. Open PS2 save builder and open exploit.max in it. In the Root/ID field type BEDATA-SYTEM for PAL consoles or BADATA-SYSTEM for NTSC consoles. Right click below the listed files and choose to add the TITLE.DB that you created earlier (it is in the same directory as Titleman Frontend... remember?). Now save the modified exploit.max file, it's fine to overwrite. This is the file we need to get on the memory card! Exploit - Step 2 Plug your flash drive into a USB port on your PC and transfer the exploit.max onto it. Then plug your flash drive into a USB port on your PS2. Turn it on and start up Action Replay Max. Enter Max Memory (this takes aaaaaaaaages to load) and then go into My Devices. Select the flash drive and wait for the exploit.max file to show. Select it then on the menu on the right choose Uncrush to MC1. Wait until it's done then turn off the PS2. Now turn on the PS2 with the memory card and trigger disc in. You should see the PS2 load up thingy, then it'll go white for a few seconds. This is the PS2 effectively crashing which allows the program LaunchELF (named BOOT.ELF in exploit.max) to launch. From here you can access all parts of your PS2; HD, memory cards, USB, etc. Funky stuff eh? You have just softmodded your PS2! But now what...? Ripping Games: Now your PS2 has the ability to do a whole lot more... why don't you put it to use by ripping some games for you! You will need to download and extract HDLoader.Then transfer the ELF file to your flash drive. On your PS2 trigger the exploit so you are at the LaunchELF main screen. You can press SELECT to change the buttons used within LaunchELF, but for now I'll stick to the defaults. Press CIRCLE to access the Filebrowser. The controls are shown at the bottom of the screen. The flash drive will probably be called mass:/ if not then just explore until you find it, it will contain the HDLoader ELF file. When you've found it, highlight it and press R1 to access the menu. Choose Copy. Navigate to mc0 (which is memory card 1) and then to BEDATA-SYSTEM on PAL consoles or BADATA-SYSTEM for NTSC. You should see the contents of the exploit.max file we sent here earlier! Highlight any of the files, R1 and choose Paste. HDLoader is now on your memory card! Navigate back to the main screen. We are now going to make a shortcut for HDLoader. Press SELECT, highlight TRIANGLE and press CIRCLE to browse the files. Navigate to the HDLoader ELF on the memory card and press CIRCLE to confirm. You can press SQUARE now to edit the title to HDLoader if it helps. Now from the start screen just press TRIANGLE to access HDLoader... Go ahead and start it up! If it asks you if you want your HD formatting say yes. You will see an empty games list and a menu on the right. Open your CD tray and take out the trigger disc (you actually don't need this after that white screen has appeared!) and replace it with a PS2 game of your choice. Press RIGHT to access the menu and navigate to Install, X to confirm. If your PS2 game is already in the drive choose Continue. It takes about 30 mins to rip a game. Once you have ripped some games, in the games list highlight the game you want to play, RIGHT to access the menu and hit X with Play highlighted. Ta da!! This works for most games (DVD-5) but a few games (DVD-9) will not work with HDLoader. This is by no means all you can do with a softmodded PS2, this is just a starting point. I'm sure our good friend can help you discover more about softmodding!
now everyone wants to mod there ps3 and xbox360 and even the little psp, too bad if this guide had been around when ps2 modding was more in fashion it would have been more popular
Know of any "Dashboards" (as it's called for the XBOX) that I can use on my PS2 instead of HD Loader?
Nothings wrong with HD Loader, its just that I would have prefered something else like the XBOX such as XBMC 360 where its an HD Loader + Multimedia interface.
With the advent of Memor32, I would imagine you could cut out the whole Action Replay bit. What I am trying to do, though, is just to boot a simple Japanese import game on a US fat PS2. If I were to use the aforementioned .max file, a file format now supported by the save game loader memento put out, could I bypass the bit about crashing the PS2 and simply boot the disc? It's simplifying and complexicating the process at the same time, I know, but just wondered if you knew.
I just received my AR Replay Max. But when i put it in my PS2 i dont see max media player i just see my devices and in my devices i dont see my flash drive. so i wanted to know is my ar action replay not compatible?
Yeah it does yeah that. This is the one i got: http://www.amazon.com/PS2-Action-Re..._6?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1206732085&sr=1-6 Well it says my devices in the action replay in the ps2 screen but i dont see anything not even the memory cards
IDK, Is it a PS2 memory card and does it have a lot of gamesaves on it? Try inserting the memory card after the AR loads. Other then that, I don't know. Post back with results.
hey there PR4NK573R i done exploit ages ago but i just followed ur tutorial about the max exploit when i try to copy anything with R1 it doesnt work only L1 works and gives different button and arrow symbols R2 brings up loads of number on the left hand side with the = sign next to them so how do i get the copy and paste box to appear in the top left hand corner do i av to go back to the main menu and change some button configurations thanks in advance for help and max exploit works perfect and only took about 5 seconds to load up with swap magic lol couldnt find the hd loader elf like to copy ove as stated in tutorial never mind i alread had that ne way and 1 more thing do i need to copy over the exploit.max wot i made earlier with the tutorial mainly i wud like to non how to get the copy and paste function working thanks
On the ps2 the action replay max has six options Expert mode, my devices, dvd region x, features, settings and powersaves. In the max media creator for output media there are three options save to file, ps2 cd rom and usb drive. I cant use the ps2 cd rom it says "this item cannot be selected as no drives have been detected in this category "
Does the flash drive work now? It'll only recognize the PS2 CD drive if a original PS1/PS2 game is inside.
it says that the ps2 cd rom is not detected in windows well i get that message. i reformatted the flash drive so its clean now what can i do to test it on the ps2 do i just connect it? Also the memory card that came with the ar max is not detected and when ar is loading i get a message saying insert ar max hardware and i inserted the ar max mem card and it thats the only way i get to the where i have the six options i was talking about. so i dont know if the ar max on the ps2 is a different version from the max media creator on my pc.
