we talk about homebrew kinda stuff here occasionally so i figured it'd be worth making a thread about this; plus i figure it'd be good to log all this stuff i did and/or write a guide because i had to scrap together tons of info myself. this is actually mostly from memory so some things might not be exact but it definitely has the right idea overall

A while back I found an English patch for Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+. Kingdom Hearts II is one of my favorite games and everything I had heard about Final Mix+ was that it was a massive improvement on the original. (Unlike the first game's Final Mix, which really wasn't significantly different from what we got in the states anyway). Anyway I had played through this on emulators a few times, and figured it'd be cool to check if there's any way I can play this on my PS2. I don't remember any significant issues with running it through an emulator but it's definitely better on the original console, i think.

(as far as this patch goes, it's great. It's not perfect though- some of the text seems to be off by a few pixels so you'll notice weird artifacts at the top of subtitles and maybe some other areas of text. The images that give you instructions for minigames aren't translated at all for some reason, and although this uses the Japanese input style (O for attacking/selecting and X for jumping/canceling) the info boxes that tell you what buttons to press are ripped straight form the English version so the buttons they tell you are wrong lol. There's a few other minor presentation issues with it, but overall it's the game in English and a pretty awesome job for a fan translation of a PS2 game.- but this isn't what this post is about )

I have one of those old PS2s, got around the time the PS2 first came out. Big, clunky, but it does its job pretty well. (We actually have 3 of these PS2s in my house, lol) so here's what I discovered you needed (and luckily for me it's all stuff I had lying around!) I think this is a pretty cool project to invest in for anyone as you wouldn't have to worry about dreaded Disc Read Errors for your games anymore as well as getting faster read speeds for your games as reading off of an HDD is faster

A computer running windows or some gnu/linux distro
A PS2 of the original model
The network adapter (modem?)
an IDE HDD compatible with the PS2 network adapter
The PS2 Memory Card adapter for the PS3
Some means of connecting the IDE HDD to your computer- I have a IDE/SATA to USB thing personally. this isn't exactly necessary as you can transfer things over the PS2's networking instead, but I'd recommend it as PS2's networking is extremely slow. it's also what I did anyway so I can't really help with the networking

Software:
ps3mca-tool-fmcb-1.8c.zip and ps3mca-windrv.zip (if you're using linux the windows driver is unecessary) - this allows you to manage the data on the PS2 memory card through your computer. it also comes with an installer for the Free MC Boot software, which allows you to run homebrew content off of your PS3. Make sure you backup your memory card before using this though, as it requires formatting it!
openPS2Loader - this allows booting games off of the PS2's harddrive
HDL Dump/Dumb this allows you to copy PS2 game ISOs to the harddrive so they can be run by OpenPS2Loader

first plug in the memory card to the adapter and then to your computer and run mc-format.bat and then full-install.bat. then extract the open ps2 loader files and copy the OPNPS2LD.ELF to the directory the ps3mca tool stuff is in. then open a command prompt and run and that'll install open ps2 loader on the memory card. Now the memory card is all set and next time you boot your ps2 with that memory card inserted, it'll load up Free MC Boot.

Next you want to load up Free MC Boot with the HDD installed in your PS2. Run ULaunchElf from the PS2 menu and it'll open up a file browser of sorts. if you head to the MISC section there should be some HDD browser tool that'll format the HDD to the filesystem the ps2 needs. after you do that you can shut down the ps2 and plug the HDD into your computer. use HDL_DUMB and pick the ISO you want to copy to the HDD or put the disc you want in the disc drive and use that instead and repeat for each game you want on there. Afterwards put the HDD back in the PS2, boot up ULaunchElf again and this time head to mc0:// or mc1:// (whichever memory card slot you used) and open /OPL/OPNPS2LD.ELF and hit circle and it'll show the games you have installed and you can boot them from there.

so far everything's working fine for me, so i hope this might help someone else interested in this sort of thing

That's pretty nifty - and someone will probably find it quite helpful. I always like seeing what people can do to soup up regular old out-of-the-box consoles.

excelent!
I finally have a confirmed report of this being able to work!
and from a highly trusted source no less!

Time to work toward fixing this old Fat PS2 in my room!

Good work Kesha!!

Very interesting! Now running Pirated games is easier.

that's "backups" and "homebrew"

yeah if you have one of the old models of the ps2 i say it's a good investment of your time- especially considering the lasers for that can cause problems reading discs and thats always a headache when you want to play your favorite games.

my main interest is putting the games i already own on it, that way i don't have to worry about managing discs or disc read errors ever again.

I noticed some broken links in the original post and updated them to their Github links.

I don't recommend this for running Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix+ anymore, as that's been released on the PS3 (in the Kingdom Hearts II.5 collection) and the PS4 (in the Kingdom Hearts I.5 & II.5 collection), but it still can be useful for making playing your own games easier.

Cool. Thanks for the update on that - I appreciate it.