Expert: Octane - 9/11/2006

Question

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Followup To

Question -
Hello, I'm a big fan of Soccer management games such as LFP manager and Championship manager ON PS2, but my problem is that living in the US makes it hard for me to find those kind of games, given that soccer is not really the most popular sport here. The best solution for me would be to order my games from europe, which means they will be PAL. Is there anyway for me to be able to play a PAL game on an NTSC system, or would buying a PAL system be the only solution?

Answer -
Gday,

You would need some type of Boot CD/Slide tool or some Mod chip to be able to play a PAL game on NTSC system.  Magic Swap disk is usually quite good as you don't have to rip you PS2 to bits.  (you still have to fool it by opening the CD draw without the machine detecting it being opened)

Getting a PAL system is not a choice as it will output a PAL signal which 99% of all US TV will not play (It will be in B/W and Roll being beyond watchable)  So th eSwap Disk or othe solution is probably your cheapest solution.

Hope this helps.




Hello, it's me again. Thanks for responding. I have other concerns. So how exactly would the e-swap disc work? I noticed that you talked about having to fool the machine, i would really appreciate if you could tell me exactly what i'm supposed to do. I'm no expert, and at the same time i'm afraid to do something that would damage the system. Would using the swap disk have any side effects i should be aware of? In case none of this work, you are saying that even buying a PAL system will not work? Thank you for helping me out, i really appreciate it.

Answer
Gday,

The way the Magic Swap disk works is it boots the the PS2 into a state where the Machine has all the information loaded into it that it needs (IE country information, signal output etc) then it goes into a wait status and stops the disk spinning.  The Boot Disk is then swapped with the out of region game.  A button is pressed on the controller and it then loads the game portion of the disk.  (Realisticly the system thinks the 2 disks are 1 disk.  The Boot disk for the boot information and the Game for the game information)

Now the playstation senses when the eject button is pressed and then it is it puts it self into a boot standby.  The Magic Swap relys on the playstation not putting itself into this status.  In the Case of an older model PS2 you have to use a slide tool to open the disk draw (Not pressing the eject button) to swap the disk and the Slimline PS2 you use a spring to hold down the door censor so the PS2 does not open know the door is open when you are swapping disks.

The Magic swap disk does not require you to open up you PS2 or re-wire it or anything like that.  Older models you may have to undo 2 screws on the CD tray front.  But it does not breach any warrenty sony has on the thing like opening it up.  No side effects that I know of.

Buying a PAL machine would not work because US TV's can't handle PAL signals.  (You would also have to buy a PAL TV as well to get this to work)  US TV run purely in NTSC format.   (Which has to do with lines Per Inch, Signal Speed Mhz and Coloring)  What you would get when putting a PAL signal on a NTSC TV is a rolling picture in B/W which is fairly much unwatchable.  Unless you have a TV that you can swap the signal from NTSC to PAL it will not work.  (There are the odd TV out there in the USA like that but they are few and far between)  A lot of Europian Countries, Australia, Nz and most of China have TV which work with duel signal, they Automaticly switch.  Don't aske me why it works that way where most of the world equipment is duel and the USA is single.  

Anyway I hope this helps.