Attempted Guitar Hero 2 Hacking

Before I begin this, some background information is necessary. I live in my friend's parent's house with him. Hence forth, he shall be known as Pee, and he may or may not be joining us in this blog. For some time his Playstation 2 has been a little on the 'special' side. You know, not reading discs and crashing sometimes, but overall nothing that would make you want to go out and replace it. Don't get me wrong, it's not really that bad, but it is a little quirky.

So for some time we were aware of a Guitar Hero 2 file online that had replaced every song on it with another song that someone custom made, and after awhile, we decide that we might as well try it out, but not after some research. We find that we need a mod chip, the hard drive, or magic swap. Laziness swelled within us, so we continued researching until Pee found an article that said it was possible with only a Gameshark 2 and some slight... 'Adjustments' to the PS2 itself. 'Adjustments' meaning we need to take off the faceplate and stick something into it and push a piece of plastic around. Very scientific. Anyways, we agreed that we should pursue this and went forth to get the Gameshark. Before we left, though, we spent a good twenty minutes trying to figure out how the 'adjustments' on the PS2 actually worked. We ended up taking the cover off and managed to figure it out. When we get back, it won't turn on. Somehow, the ribbon cable that connects the reset and eject button to the system had come undone. The next hour was spent taking the PS2 almost entirely apart to fix it, which we actually did. (Pee actually did all the work, I kind of just held a light.)

The disc was burned, the PS2 at the ready with the Gameshark in place. Something is wrong. There isn't a memory card with the Gameshark as the directions suggest there should be. We have the wrong version of Gameshark, apparently when they went from version 1.0 to 1.2 they dropped the memory card. Great. But, all is not yet lost, the author of the instructions says he hears it works on all versions. Well, hot damn, I'm very aroused. The fact that almost everything is different because we're not using version 1.0 is a little annoying to me, since part of it excluded the need to make any 'adjustments' to the PS2.

And... Nothing. Well, I shouldn't lie, something did happen. The PS2 now makes loud, obnoxious, almost painful noises as it attempts to read discs. But, as for the hack? So far, no go. We're debating on whether or not it's how Pee burned it, if it's just his PS2. Oh, and we removed the reset and eject buttons from the case and left the case off. So now it looks like some electronics experiment gone horribly wrong. It leans very much so to the left.

As a side note, if your PS2 occasionally has problems reading discs, or just stops one day, you don't need to bring it to someone and pay out the ass to fix it. Pee simply just opens it up, sprays a bit of air on it, and tightens some screws and it starts working better. Don't do this if you don't feel comfortable, though. First of all, it voids your warranty, if you still have it, and secondly if you don't know what you're doing you can damage the system. But hey, if you want, we can see what we can do. Neeeee out!