The first thing we notice about this portable PS2 is that the plastic looks like a consumer-grade shell, not a 3D printed case. It comes from [GingerOfOz], who has lots of portable conversions under his belt, so we are not surprised this looks like a genuine Sony device. When you are as experienced as he, details like plastic texture, and button selection, are solved problems, but shouldn’t be taken for granted by us mortals.
Of course, this isn’t just pretty, and if it weren’t functional, we wouldn’t be talking about it. The system plays nearly all PS2 titles from USB memory. The notable exceptions are the ones that refuse to load without a Dualshock controller. Rude. If you’re wondering if it plays games at full speed, yes. It achieves authentic speed because it uses a PS2 slim motherboard which gets cut down by a Dremel. Custom PCBs provide the rest of the hardware, like volume buttons and battery charging. There is no optical drive since they are power hogs, so your cinematic cut scenes may lag, and load times are a little longer.
Modern mobile phones are one of the most powerful gaming systems ever built, but there is something about purpose-built portable gaming hardware that just feels right. You know?
Thank you for the tip, [Sven].
Cutting a multilayer PCB is insane, why not just load up a PS2 emulator?
“why not just […]” is not a thing you should ask anyone on here… ;)
…. You are on hackaday … Not on like “don’t do it it seems pretty hard there are easier ways.com”
Dude definitely knows about emulators and does it precisely because it’s hard. Everyone over on bitbuild are amazing engineers and hackers who use these projects to learn more about the hardware they love.
Emulators are possible because some idiot decided to find out how the instructions for these consoles work and I’m sure his friends probably said “why are you doing this ps2s are ubiquitous”
I guess what I’m getting at is, yes there are simpler ways to reach a goal but most times it’s about learning not playing PS2 on your phone.
Your question is answered at 7:20 in the video. He also shows it running a snes emulator.
The question is why would he use an emulator when he can hack apart original hardware and play the games natively?
I get it, but how the …. is that screen connected and what screen is that actually?
If it follows the usual track that these do, its driven by a composite video signal tapped out of whatever traces were going to the AV port on the back of the PS2 before it was literally hacked apart.
Ah composite ofc!
I’m not sure for this specific implementation, but the ps2 also natively has component and analog rgb so it’d just be a matter of finding a small screen with those inputs.
Or a small screen whose controller accepts these inputs and wiring into them. Whether or not the manufacturer of the screen provided the inputs.
The other answers are wrong. It’s not composite. It uses VGA. The H and V sync pins are not accessable through the connector, but are generated and accessable through solder able points on the board. More details are in Gman’s PS2 trimming guide.
“why not just …” is not something you should ask anyone here ;)
Lol, at 46 seconds and check his search history (not suggestions, his history)
mario
where is mario
super mario
is it mario or mario
is mario real
is mario single
how does no one else like mario like i do
top 10 mario
i like mario
big mario
Dudes a genius I mean I only wish I had the smarts to do something like that I would have him at MIT in a heartbeat