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My modded PS1 is on its last legs. It's time to retire it. I currently have a PS2 slim that I use Swap Magic to play backups, but that doesn't work for PS1 games.

So, what is the best way to mod my PS2 slim to play backup PS1 games?

The best way to play PS1 burns on a PS2 is with a modchip. People dread the PS2 modchip installation because it's 20-some-odd wires. But really, if you can solder 1 wire than you can solder 20. It's tedious, which makes it daunting in an annoying way, but it's not necessarily hard.

There's the new Mechapwn exploit which might be able to help, but I'm not too familiar with it yet. According to this RetroRGB article, you can use it to boot PS1 burns. It only works on certain revisions of the PS2 but I believe that includes all slim models (as well as all phat models that don't have the link port). Since you already have a way of booting PS2 backups on your slim, then you should be able to install Free MCboot on a memory card without much trouble. You need the FMCB exploit installed on a memory card so that you can launch homebrew apps, such as the MechaPwn installer.

Is an ODE not an option? The XStation is $100 and will boot all of your "backups," then any legit PS1 discs you have can be played on your PS2 slim. Another option I would suggest is just getting another PS1, which are still fairly cheap. Just swap your mod chip from your old PS1 to a new one.

Ziggy, that worked great. I found a tutorial for using SwapMagic to install FreeMcBoot and then the Mechapwn you linked to. It worked great.

I own Lunar SSSC, but want to play the UnWorked version that restores the stats back to what the Japanese version was.

Thanks again.

Awesome, glad it worked for you!

FMCB is a great thing to have, anyway. You can use the app uLaunchELF as a file browser. The obvious thing is being able to launch homebrew apps (you could also install apps on a memory card for faster loading without having to go into uLaunchELF). If you put a USB thumb drive in your PS2, you can copy save files to and from a memory card. Meaning you can backup and restore your save files to PS1 or PS2 memory cards.

I've been meaning to give MechaPwn a try myself, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I have a phat model with a HDD and OPL set up, and I bought a modchip with the intent on installing it in my slim model. But then Mechapwn came out, and it's compatible with my slim but not my phat. So now I'm torn what I want to do!

Worth noting I had about 85% success rate in my testing of POPStarter, using USB or HDD to play PS1 rips digitally on a PS2.

Unfortunately the POPS & OPL crews had a falling out and kept blocking each other's work. At one point, you could load POPS directly from OPL.