PS2/HTPC hybrid?

[kidd_bill]

I've been wondering if it's at all possible to hybridize a PC/HTPC with a Playstation 2? What I imagine is having the hardware of a PS2 inside the PC and sharing one DVD/BD drive to play the PS2 games off of, while still maintaining the backwards compatibility with PS1 games. Maybe slots for the memory cards that with the right software could be read by the computer as well.

Total noob here, but this has been a fantasy of mine for some time. I have a fully backwards compatible PS3 but I kind of envy the slim ones out now especially with the lower power consumption.

[tom61]

The drive in the PS2 and PC drives are incompatible. You could shove the PS2's drive in a bay (phat) or put it on the side of the case (slim) and hook up the guts inside and run it to a capture card on the PC, though.

[kidd_bill]

so the guts of a PS2 can function inside of a PC case? I'm not understanding what you said about the drives, though. Is it basically that I'd need a separate bay for the PS2's DVD drive? It's proprietary, I gather?

[tom61]

Yeah, a PC case is just a box really, you can shove whatever you want into it. The drive is proprietary, so you have to mount the PS2's separately, and a convenient spot is where the PC's DVD drives usually go (you have to modify the drive and/or bay to fit it in).

You should check out Yoshi's box for more ideas:

(keep in mind that this is from 2002, lots of room for improvement)

[kidd_bill]

wow. that was great! I swear I searched google for hours looking for something like that and never came close. Thanks! gives me a bit of a jumping off point.

[kidd_bill]

I've read about emulators that can read PS2 discs off of a PC's DVD drive. Is it possible to get the PS2 mobo to accept the computer's drive as its own? Or for the computer to utilize the PS2 hardware as a component whenever I insert a PS2 disc?

[tom61]

I know of no way to use a PC's DVD drive directly in a PS2. However, you can mod the PS2 to boot from a network. Meaning you should be able to make a PC drive with a PS2 disc a network share and load from it.

You can also add a harddrive to the PS2 and load games from it, but you can't have the harddrive used by the PC at the same time.