An old PS2 that belonged to either my cousin or late uncle. (I had two at some point, but one vanished somewhere.) Its only issues were a broken optical drive and 20 years worth of dust, though the former had nothing to do with my decision to give it new life... I just wanted a machine that could run a Japanese copy of Einhander for my dad. So the project was more or less a Father's Day gift. He helped clean its insides.
During early tests, I ran into a scare when I accidentally deleted my memory card's version of uLaunchELF in a failed transfer of an older version of uLE; 4.43, which was pre-installed on the card, constantly froze on file transfers from any external media. But it taught me that when in a pinch, uLE can be launched off of a USB stick. Also that 4.43 is a fickle guy.
My biggest issue with this build—and something I am willing to adjust with time—is its inability to run POPStarter (PSX emulator) off an HDD. I found someone with an identical build who dealt with the same headache, but I wish I did earlier because I probably took years off of my SSD's life trying to set up and destroy partitions for POPStarter to work. The third-party adapters are known to cause oddities and the solution would be to modify an official PS2 network adapter to accept SATA, but I don't want to spend more money right now. Miscellaneous hiccups stem from my broken controller and poor contact between ports and components.
As one should expect from random third-party hardware, this slightly cheaper alternative to an official Sony network adapter offers convenience in exchange for results. The fat PS2 models and their network adapters were built to support internal IDE hard drives. Note: Together they were to store temp data and update online games, not to bypass copy protections. IDEs are larger, more sensitive to wear and tear (internal components), and provide less space than a SSD, which have very recently decreased to reasonable prices. Official adapters are also $5-8 more and must be modified to support connecting SSD. Why buy a 250gb IDE when you can find a 1 TB SSD for the same price? That was my line of thinking anyway.
The adapter gets the job done, and that's all a normal user needs. But the limitations it poses to the SSD are annoying; POPstarter hates me and want me dead. It lacks an ethernet port like official adapters do, so streaming games through a wired connection and online capabilities aren't possible. The two screws on the back of the adapter don't need to be twisted in far at all, but one is looser than the other and harder to line up when trying to fasten the adapter straight. I've been lazy and kept it unscrewed just to pull the SSD in and out quickly, but it's safer to twist the screws lightly each time lol.