cyprinidae

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞
Hello! My name is Fish.

hacking my ps2 was really fun,

so i'm going to write about it.
i have a ps2 slim, 70012 model, so i'm mostly writing all this down for my later self because i don't know if it'll work on your specific model.
in order to load custom firmware, all you need to do is buy a FreeMCBoot memory card off of Amazon or something for like 15$. it just WORKS, it loads into homebrew immediately, and that'll let you launch some things. (ulaunchELF lets you launch .elf homebrew, select "mass" as your USB drive, format to fat32. don't run games off it, usb 1.1 is very slow.)
in order to play ps2 games (without modifying your console at all, you need to burn them. if your game is a .bin and .cue, combine them UltraISO (trial), go to properties and select these settings, then click "save as" and save as iso. if your game is an .iso, cool skip that. next get ESR Disc Patcher and patch your .iso file with it. (this is one method of loading ps2 games- ill talk about the other in a bit). burn your disc onto a DVD-R (NOT a dvd+r), one with 4.7gb of space, at the lowest speed your burner can manage. (use imgburn) (i tested 8x instead of 3x, and it seemed to work fine, but it was recommended to me to burn slower.) fmcb will auto-bott the esr-patched disk for you.
in order to play ps1 games you need to do a little hack called MechaPWN. it backs up something about your system (im not sure what), and it basically lets you turn your console into a devkit one. follow this tutorial. keep force unlock OFF. burn your disc onto a cd, it seems like you can just.. burn the bin and cue files onto a disc.
if you have force unlock ON, you can boot ps2 games, unpatched, from a disc. this is useful in very specific situations only - for example, parappa 2 doesn't work using ESR! however, installing force unlock will not let you boot PS1 backups or DVDs. (you can still boot real ps1 games.) you can uninstall force unlock by repeating the setup process and selecting "no"