Much to my joy, I found that my local Gamestop carried the Network adapter (remember Network adapter = hard drive?) and instead of it being 30 dollars it was a scant 10! Once I arrived there, I inquired the Gamestop employee where said item was and was informed that the adapter was attached to another PS2 already and they could not give it to me since they didn't have the back plate to cover up the hole left by it. Fortunately I had my PS2 with me in the car with said back plate and convinced them to let me trade my back plate for their adapter (I still had to pay for it of course).
Armed with everything I needed for my set up, I traveled home and inserted a certain disc to allow me to install my hard drive and play games from it. And then I hit "a snag". Turns out this disc only responds to a controller plugged into the 1st player port... you know, the broken one. And just like that, my new PS2 was in pieces on the floor as I searched for the problem. Long story short, the cable that attached the controller ports to the motherboard was loose. It would have been a simple thing to fix... if I hadn't taken apart the entire thing.
As I attempted to reinsert the cable, I realized that the PS2 had designed the cable holder in a fascinating way. The cable in question was just a flat, paper thin cable. To make sure this cable didn't become dislodged, the holder would clamp down on the cable. I found this out just in time for the clamp to break on one end. A quick superglue and electrical tape job later, and I was back in action! At some point I'll buy a replacement piece for it, but right now I'm okay with this solution (plus the replacement pieces cost 25 bucks in most places, if I wanted to spend that much I would have just bought the thing new!). With the first player port now working, it was a simple matter to install the hard drive and copy the discs over to it.
Now one thing I should mention about this software I installed to let me copy the games... the original software it was based on was shut down by Sony (the maker of PS2). Their contention was that by making it such that the game CD is not needed to play the game, the software created piracy solutions where the user could buy the game, copy it, then turn around and return it while keeping the game on their hard drive. And I understand this concern. If Sony had been smart however, they would have simply made it so the game would run from the hard drive only when the game CD was present in the drive (most modern games work like this on the computer). Then they would have made a fortune of selling PS2 compatible Hard drives larger than the official 40GB hard drive.
Regardless, I believe in showing corporations that not every gamer is out to rob them blind (in fact, most aren't and their anti-piracy measures are only hurting the people following the rules). Which is why I have no problem in using a software based on another software shut down by a corporation provided I use it to the fullest legal extent of only making backup copies of my games that will be deleted in the event that I ever sell said game.
Remember kids, always read the EULA so you can know your rights and do things like this to the full extent of the law!
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