what media do you want to use? if you have a DVD burner you can use the ESR patcher and ESR patch a PS2 iso, then burn it to a DVD and put it in your PS2 while it’s booting and it should just run, as long as the freemcboot card is inserted
you can also use network shares, usb, and an internal hdd if you’ve got one in your ps2, but the method is different depending on what you’re going with
There’s no way to get a slim to have an internal hdd right? And USB is really slow? Network seems best then. I see your earlier post about OPL, I’ll look into that
this is still a relatively recent version (in the grand scheme of ps2 homebrew, at least), but keep in mind there isn’t much reason to upgrade generally. you can do it but the only real benefits are:
even the oldest widely available versions of freemcboot let you launch unsigned code, which means you are already capable of doing just about everything without needing to upgrade that particular part of your setup.
you can load up any PS2 homebrew .elf files on a USB thumbdrive and use FreeMCBoot Configurator to create shortcuts on the PS2 OSD to launch the elfs directly without needing to first load your onboard ulaunchelf
P.S. this is not explained anywhere but LaunchElf is the original swiss-army-knife of PS2 homebrew. it lets you launch elf files directly (among dozens of other great features, including HDD and memory card management). uLaunchElf is an unofficial fork that improves it. wLaunchElf is an unofficial fork of the unofficial fork that improves the first unofficial fork.
one caveat - if you use an internal HDD, it is actually worth considering updating FMCB because they added an option on the OSD to gracefully shut down the console - shutting off the PS2 normally will otherwise cause the drive to abruptly halt and this has been alleged to cause issues.
I don’t have pictures of the install process, but it’s dead simple. I used WinHIIP to copy images to the hard drive. I keep my FMBC memory card in the second slot. I’m using HD Retrovision PS2/PS3 component cables going to a Framemeister using one of FirebrandX’s 5x profiles for PS2. It looks pretty good on my Mitsubishi DLP!
ahh nice, thank you!
i see you’re going with WinHIIP. tried and true! WinHIIP is still great if you stay under 320 GB or so (and i see you’ve done so, so you shouldn’t have any issues), but I believe you’ll run into issues if you go any higher - that’s why i recommend those batchkits i linked earlier in the thread, they get around that limitation and are fire and forget for massive gobs of games.
Good to know if I ever decide I need a bigger HD!
something else to keep in mind - you can’t allow your hard drive to get fragmented. fragmented games will straight up refuse to work! so deleting games and adding other games is a dangerous route! i tended to wipe the whole thing and do it over to avoid running into fragmentation issues
Your talk of HD booting has me remembering I really need to find some time to sit down and make PAL variants of the FirebrandX PS2 profiles. Given the number of PAL titles which just present a 480i frame inside a 576i signal it just needs some different numbers.
Also someday I will replace my PS2’s 240V power supply and step-down transformer with something else. I was thinking USB-C so it could just steal the Switch power brick lmao
i assume there will be a ps2digital at some point (maybe already teased somewhere?) considering how great the wii, gc, n64, dreamcast, ps1, and upcoming xbox iterations are
i’m not sure exactly what else does a direct digital-to-hdmi out but i’m pretty sure all of those do
yeah it’s been teased:
repeatedly:
though I’m a touch sceptical of how much of an improvement it’ll be over the PS2’s already-pretty-fantastic YPbPr output. maybe if it can handle resolution switches without renegotiating the HDMI end it’ll be worth it
@dementia re: videogame things you think about a lot (since that thread has diverged…) I’ve considered it but I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable getting a clone GDEMU; like or loathe the guy who sells the originals it just feels a bit scummy to me. I recognise I seem to be in the minority with that though
my wife would really be very happy if you take my CD-Rs
lmao okay well maybe once the air quality isn’t out to murder me I’ll come collect 
I’ll trade them for my apple cd 300e which I need back for another wife-related reason (I finally persuaded her to get rid of her terrible old cheapo stereo from the living room by buying an old hifi and restored vintage speakers but I need to use it as an actual CD player now to complete the setup)
you’re on… soon as this horrible smoke clears. come to think of it, I don’t suppose you’ve got any dual-layer DVD±Rs on hand that I could twist your arm out of?
i respect this take 100%, thank you for putting it out there. i feel kinda bad for having bought the clone, myself, so maybe i shouldn’t advertise it with links.
at the very least, here’s the actual site that sells the legit gdemu: https://gdemu.wordpress.com/
definitely consider patronizing him if you can, you get firmware updates and probably better build quality and get to avoid feeling vaguely guilty about your purchase
just hosed my PlayStation 2 HDD’s file system 
now it’s stuck in a loop trying to boot to the home menu
a good reminder that I need to do more regular backups lmao (I do have a backup, but it’s from 2017, oops)
There’s always the Terra Onion MODE installed in a Dreamcast option.
good news folks it only took a day of restoring (I’m going to have to invest in a UHS-compatible SD reader 
) but it boots once more, just with like a dozen fewer games on it!
