Good PS2 to buy/mod

[dbeamer407]

I've never played any Playstation in my life, but my 8 yr. old son has been enjoying all of my old Nintendo and Sega consoles and has been asking about playstations. I'm looking to buy him a PS2 and I am interested in everyone's opinions on which is the best to look for as well as how to distinguish that model.

I want to be able to play PS1 & PS2 back-up's as well as originals and preferably not get booted from online play.

I would rather be able to put the backups in and boot and not have to mess with swapping discs every time.

I'm also interested in looking for one of the more reliable versions that can still have the above mentioned mods performed.

Any ideas on which version would best suit my needs? If so can you provide any information on identifying that version. And finally what is the best mod for your recommended version and where can it be obtained?
Thanks

[dlmvii]

Slim ps2s are nice, and as long as they aren't the newest model, they can use FreeMCBoot, which is what you'll want to google for backups. With ps1 backups, you have to either use a modchip or swap discs, there is no "easy" way to play the backups with a ps2.

[dedalusdedalus]

if you want to avoid swapping discs, you might want to go with the old fat ps2. that has an expansion bay into which you can put a hard drive.

in addition to the hard drive, you'll also need HD loader or some other program and a PS2 network adapter.

[Hatta]

You definitely want the hard drive. Then you won't have to worry about your kid scratching the discs. Can't use it with PSX games though, you'll need a mod chip to play copies of those. Given the complexity of PS2 mod chips, it's probably better to get an old PSX and chip it instead.

[dbeamer407]

So my son bought a PS2 slim with his birthday money. It's a 79001. Supposedly Modbo 4.0 will work with this but I haven't seen the diagram with all the solder points for this version. Has anybody here put a modchip in one of these units?

[Anapan]

Mine's a 75001, but I think this is the page I got my pics off of and it has pictures for your son's model as well.
http://www.brisbane-mods-brisbane-modch ... agrams.htm

[DethManX]

The question is how handy are you with soldering? If you don't have much soldering experience I wouldn't suggest jumping straight to the PS2 mod. It's no joke and will kick your ass - depending on rev you have to solder to very small pads, vias, and IC legs.

Someone else suggested FreeMCBoot which I can recommend if you're only concerned with PS2 games. You either run a softmod to install FreeMCBoot to a memory card, or get someone with a modded PS2 to make the memory card for you. After that as long as the memory card is in the PS2 you can boot backups using a loader program, I forget what it's called. No PS1 games though.

If you're set on a modchip get the Crystal Chip. You can get the lite version for like 15 bucks, or if you get one of the other versions they come with more flash memory on board. Then you can install the boot manager and apps directly to the chip, no need to have a memory card always in for that. With a modchip you can boot and run anything.

Check out psx-scene.com tons of info there.

[Tancred]

If you get FreeMCBoot you can add an app called ESR. Using ESR you can patch ISOs on your PC, burn them to a disc, and play them without having to swap on your PS2. I believe the program fools the PS2 into thinking that the disc is a DVD movie and not a game. But you have to patch them on your PC before burning.

Personally, I use FreeMCBoot and CogSwapLoader. I only found out about ESR recently and obviously the massive amounts of games I have burned don't work on it because they're not patched. My Swap Magic DVD is pretty badly scratched from lending it to too many people, so I swap a large game with CogSwap instead.