The PS2 was noisy only because the lens assembly was skipping a few steps on the worm gear. I lubricated the assembly, bent the arm a bit and the issue disappeared.
The RTC battery is dead though. I love PS2s but they are very annoying consoles in respect to battery serviceability: you have to do a total disassembly of them to pop the old one out.
Oh well, will try to do it tomorrow, will also clean it of dust, and ideally fit an SD adapter inside with a 256GB card
@TheOuterLinux thanks for the advice!
Yup, the choice of not putting a mechanical drive in there is conscious: setting aside weight/heat, to use a modern one, I'd also have to add a SATA board to my network adapter, and in the specific case I wish to use this unit for (having a look at ps2sdk again after almost 10 years) an SD card is going to be more than enough.
In fact, I could just save myself some hassle and just use one of my slim units, but I do love the form factor of their bigger brother :)
@hkz Maybe this will help? https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io/Software/Consoles/PS2/Development/desktop.html
I also have more console-related stuff here... https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io/Software/Consoles/desktop.html
Most of the software listed is meant to actually run on the game console. However, much of the development software requires a computer.
It also turns out that Lua may be the easiest and most cross-platform way of game creation for computers and consoles unless you count the very large number of GB/GBC emulators available for just about everything.
hkz
TheOuterLinux ✅