I've seen a few posters ask already, so I figured I'd answer what the PS2 analog button's function was.

The button switches between two modes of the analog joysticks, either to behave with their normal functionality, or to simply be a digital input (so just round all movement to either up/down/left/right). For PS2 games, you typically wouldn't want to do this. Instead, the functionality exists because the PS2 was backwards compatible with PS1 titles. The original PS1 controller didn't have analog sticks at all, just the D-Pad for navigation. After a few years (and the success of Nintendo's N64 analog controller) Sony released a revised version of the controller that included two joysticks, which their controllers still mimic to this day. However, those PS1 games released prior to the analog controller wouldn't always behave correctly if you tried to use an analog input scheme, so Sony added a mode to allow the Joysticks to function the same as the D-Pad, in case players preferred it.

Other fun fact, the analog controller was not the same as their more famous Dualshock controller. There was a short-lived PS1 Dual Analog controller which just added the joysticks. It only lasted a few months before Sony replaced it with one that supported rumble functionality (also after being inspired by the N64), this was the Dualshock.

• mikepurvis

  today at 2:04 AM

  I had a PS2 slim years ago and was annoyed that it wouldn’t let me use a “dual analog” controller I had kicking around to play PS2 games, eg for second player. Seemed like an unnecessarily hostile move to force an upgrade there when all the functionality other than rumble was clearly present.

  But of course it’s the same now on PS5. I still have my PS4 pads and use them to round out 4p couch coop for broforce, overcooked, moving out, etc, but actual PS5 games will only work with PS5 pads.

  • lloeki

    today at 6:40 AM

    > actual PS5 games will only work with PS5 pads

    So IIUC the PS4 gamepad can be used but only for PS4 games? That is ridiculous.

    Meanwhile I'm rocking an original release day Xbox One controller on a Series X.

    That said while I can understand them dropping X360 witeless due to protocol changes I'm still bitter that the X360 wired accessories were simply denied on the Xone, notably the whole Rock Band stuff as well as steering wheels.

    • gambiting

      today at 7:36 AM

      >>So IIUC the PS4 gamepad can be used but only for PS4 games? That is ridiculous.

      It's because PS5 games can use the adaptive triggers functionality that is impossible to emulate on the PS4 controller. For example in Ratchet and Clank short pull on the trigger fires the gun, there is artifical resistance past that point, but if you pull past it it will fire the secondary weapon mode. On a PS4 controller you'd just fire the secondary mode all the time because there would be no way to find the threshold on a trigger without this functionality.

      Of course games could be designed around this and support both - but Sony avoided placing such a requirement on devs so all PS5 games are presumed to be using a PS5 controller when going through cert.

      • lloeki

        today at 8:25 AM

        > On a PS4 controller you'd just fire the secondary mode all the time because there would be no way to find the threshold on a trigger without this functionality.

        Just don't mash the trigger all the way? You don't have the haptic feedback of such a trigger wall but claiming it's "impossible" is a bit extreme. A nice threshold mapping could arrange for that e.g 0-10% dead zone, 10%-80% main mode, 90%-100% secondary mode, _ factor in rate of press to avoid misfiring main mode. Which is probably the logic that it implements already, except with probably a bit more leeway thanks to the haptic feedback.

        "Impossible" would be playing a typical† dual stick game with a gamepad that has none (e.g original PS1 gamepad)

        † like a FPS that uses the now classic stick layout for quick yet precise movement + orientation

        Honest question as I'm curious and don't have access to a PS5: what about PS5-only games that happen to exist on other platforms that don't have such features? Can they be played with a PS4 controller?

        Oh and to be clear: it's not a Xbox vs PS thing, I find them both equally guilty of excessive e-wasting / platform locking, just in different ways.

        • CaptainOfCoit

          today at 9:20 AM

          > Honest question as I'm curious and don't have access to a PS5: what about PS5-only games that happen to exist on other platforms that don't have such features? Can they be played with a PS4 controller?

          Games that use PS5-exclusive features when played on PS5 obviously don't use those features when not run on a PS5, if it's been ported.

          While your idea sounds neat in practice, with those thresholds and such, I'm not sure how practical it is in real-life. Lots of controllers eventually start reporting somewhat inaccurate values, sometimes rather large variance, so whatever you end up using as the actual values, they tend to not be perfect for everyone, so then the game will appear really buggy, almost broken.

          I'm guessing they're favoring "works 100% for everyone who can run it" rather than "Kind of works for most people, broken for the rest".

• xandrius

  today at 3:25 AM

  Omg, I remember exactly that intermediate joystick. It was lighter than the dualshock, so when you held a dualshock it felt cool, especially when it started rumbling!

  • lynguist

    today at 8:41 AM

    Same with the original Sixaxis PS3 controller without rumble! I liked that lightweight controller a lot!

    It was also short lived and replaced with the PS3’s version with rumble included – they were saying it’s because of a patent dispute.

  • Lammy

    today at 4:47 AM

    I really like the concave analog sticks on that controller. The convex DualShock ones get slippery as hell once the controller is a few years old.

    The analog face buttons of the DualShock 2 are cool in concept but always made me press too hard out of fear of not getting up to full speed or whatever in games that used face buttons for acceleration (mostly Burnout 3 and Revenge for me) https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/List_of_console...

• windward

  today at 8:27 AM

  So it's unrelated to the analog face buttons?

  • CaptainOfCoit

    today at 9:21 AM

    I don't know what "face buttons" are, but the Analog button only toggles how the Joysticks work, toggling between sending Analog or Digital signals.

> Unfortunately, nobody wanted to buy these even for a cost that would cover all the expenses spent on this project. On the bright side, I have learned a lot, plus, I have a cool PS2 to play with

I'm not sure if the OP is here, but the other obvious way to cover costs here is to create Youtube videos of the restoration process. I love these (as do lots of other people).

One of my favourites is a power-tool repair technician in Ireland:

https://www.youtube.com/@deandohertygreaser

https://web.archive.org/web/20251013151036/https://retrohax....

Does anyone know the best way to get a reliably working PS2 nowadays? I happen to have a bunch of old PS2 games and would love to have a reliable PS2 to be able to use them with. But buying online seems fairly fraught - how do you have any guarantee you get a reliable device? And they seem to be fairly expensive now.

(I couldn't read the article because the site was currently down for me, so apologies if this comment is off-topic, but hopefully relevant!)

• johncoltrane

  today at 8:09 AM

  The ones you can find online are sold by people who know the market all too well so the prices are high. Plus it's online so there's no guarantee about anything.

  Pawn shops, thrift stores, or their "modern" equivalents (EasyCash, CashConverters, etc. YMMV) would be a good start. I got mine out of a pile for 10€ at a countryside GiFi (French store) ten years ago.

• stevenwoo

  today at 4:38 AM

  The author claims they could not find a buyer for theirs but they added hard drives to the finished PS2s. Browsing EBay finds a plain refurbished PS2 for 160-200 from seller with 99.3 percent rating with over 1100 sold. The mods in the article seem really nice - allowing you to rip games you own to a hard drive and play games off the hard drive instead of waiting for DVD seek/read times. There are not a lot of details about the cost of the mod in article but I’m guessing it would add a couple hundred to his sale price .

• rtpg

  today at 4:07 AM

  Mercari + Buyee will get you things that are decent.

  Here's just one of many listings. Shipping depends on where you are of course. And it's a Japanese model so you'll need to do stuff based on that. https://jp.mercari.com/item/m93693596459

• ebbi

  today at 1:31 AM

  Have you considered emulating instead?

  • trenchpilgrim

    today at 2:52 AM

    There are still many beloved games that don't emulate well.

    • xandrius

      today at 3:25 AM

      Really? Like what?

      • trenchpilgrim

        today at 4:11 AM

        In my case I'm a big fan of Ace Combat and PCSX2 has rendering issues in both software and hardware modes:

        https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/issues/10976

        https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/issues/12173

        It's gotten better (no more black untextured planes!) but the best experience is still on original hardware.

      • WhiteDawn

        today at 3:32 AM

        The Stuntman series is a still painful example.

        Blame the odd non-IEEE-754 floating point implementation changing physics enough that AI fails most of the missions which softblocks progress quite egregiously

        • CaptainOfCoit

          today at 9:23 AM

          > The Stuntman series is a still painful example.

          I tried PS2 emulation just a year to ago, just to play Stuntman and found the same thing, painfully slow and barely playable.

        • Ndymium

          today at 6:35 AM

          Made me laugh though, when in the first level that it completely blocks, the director tells you to get close to a pickup, but the car you're chasing smashes the pickup to the sky like Team Rocket.

          Last I heard there was a feature branch for testing a software implementation of floating point that would fix these issues, but naturally it would be a lot slower. I haven't tried it myself.

• bombcar

  today at 1:33 AM

  Either spend a lot for an eBay seller that looks reputable or find them at garage sales or thrift stores where they’re cheap enough to buy and try if you can’t fire it up there.

• hamdingers

  today at 2:22 AM

  If you don't care to do the work yourself, I've bought many modded consoles from Etsy sellers and have always had a great experience.

• etempleton

  today at 4:11 AM

  Look for the slim models. They are much more reliable than the standard PS2.

My PS2 slim still works (I played Teken Tag Tournament last weekend). Am I lucky? Anyone know the MTBF?

On the other hand, I don't think I've had a DS2 controller last me more than a couple of years, even with light use. I use My dual-shock 1 controllers for any game that is compatible with it, and they are still going strong.

• hi_hi

  today at 9:33 AM

  My PS2 Fat still works perfectly. The only difficulty I had was getting it running on a HDMI TV, but that was fixed with a fairly well known HDMI adapter and inputting of a specific controller combo to get it into the correct display mode.

  I was kinda shocked to see the state of some of those PS2 consoles.

• joseda-hg

  today at 1:20 AM

  The 2 OEM Dual Shock 2 I got with my console, worked for 10+ years right until I sold it

  Generics varied in quality vastly but never felt quite that sturdy I regret having to sell that PS2, specially seeing the current resurgence

• sholladay

  today at 1:19 AM

  My PS3 controllers are still working perfectly almost 20 years later. Yet I’ve had to replace my PS5 controllers three times so far, due to the joysticks not reading their position correctly. Each one lasted about a year and a half.

• doubled112

  today at 3:10 AM

  My fat PS2 stopped reading discs and was replaced with a slim when you could still buy them new. The spindle that holds the disc exploded in it over 10 years ago.

  I'm not sure what what the reliability is long term, but the PS2 is the only console I've had to replace. Kind of funny that the replacement failed too. In comparison, I have a working GameCube, Wii, and gave a working Sega Genesis to a friend a couple of years ago

  • chongli

    today at 3:19 AM

    What about using it without optical media? You can install a SATA mod and use a large SATA SSD and run all your games from that. You can even install a nice cooling fan and disconnect the DVD drive, giving you a near silent console that should last a long time.

> Unfortunately, nobody wanted to buy these even for a cost that would cover all the expenses spent on this project.

Makes me wonder how expensive these were to make.

• spaqin

  today at 2:42 AM

  It's not that they were expensive (the HDD + adapter probably being the most expensive part), but rather that the PS2s on the used market are so cheap no one was willing to pay the extra, even if it's been refurbished.

> Some controllers are originally painted with a rubber-like cover that, unfortunately, degrades with time and becomes a sticky gooey. I usually deal with it with the help of Methanol. It nicely removes it.

I have some products like that and I despise them. Maybe I should try methanol.

• aosaigh

  today at 9:22 AM

  I was going to comment on this too. I notice this happens with what feels like more traditional plastics - what exactly is going with these? It feels like over time they are breaking down and liquefying, or releasing their oils?

  • CaptainOfCoit

    today at 9:25 AM

    Same thing happens with a somewhat expensive musical instrument brand that keeps using that plastic for their buttons.

    As far as I can tell, it breaks down slower the more you use it, must be interacting with oils/something from human fingers, as I only have that happen for things that remain in storage for months/years at a time, but the gear with that sort of plastic that I use every day/week doesn't have that happening.

Absolute long shot. Say someone had a PS2 Devkit that booted once and then never again. Is there a perfect tear down and maintenance guide like this with lots of text and pictures that people have had success with before?

So... What does the analog button do?

• janmarsal

  today at 6:32 AM

  Most ps1 games only supports the d-pad. If you have a dualshock controller but want to move your dude with the analog stick instead of the d-pad, you activate the analog mode.

• dotancohen

  today at 1:44 AM

  Emulate the old D-pad.

Was peak MIPS the PS2 or the N64?

• wk_end

  today at 8:39 AM

  It's kind of a silly question, but: when the N64 came out in 1996, MIPS CPUs were high-end workstation chips; by the time the PS2 was released in 2000, SGI had effectively declared MIPS a dead-end and was shipping Intel-based machines. So I'd say the N64 wins handily: peak MIPS was a MIPS chip in every living room, powering video games that felt like the future.

  Even though the PS2 won its generation - and the N64 decidedly did not - that was despite and not because of its technical prowess; it was a less impressive machine than its two closest competitors.

• mrpippy

  today at 2:06 AM

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCI_Blue_Mountain

  • nebula8804

    today at 7:00 AM

    Wonder what happened to those computers. Hopefully they were sold on government auction and not scrapped.

• bitwize

  today at 1:25 AM

  The SGI Onyx2

• xgkickt

  today at 3:28 AM

  I certainly miss having COP2 instructions.

So, what does the analog button on the controller do?

• implicit

  today at 2:46 AM

  Some older PS1 games didn't work with the Dual Shock in analogue mode. You needed to press the button to disable the analogue sticks to play those games.

• today at 1:01 AM

• dotancohen

  today at 1:44 AM

  Emulate the old D-pad.

• ender341341

  today at 1:47 AM

  Basically acted as a trigger. So if you pressed harder the game could respond. I only really remember driving games taking advantage of it though, and can't remember the game but remember being super annoyed at some action-rpg-like game where it used it to differentiate between actions but running into issues of it interpreting all of my presses as hard presses.

  • MBCook

    today at 1:59 AM

    The real problem was that there was basically no feedback. So other than a driving game it was almost impossible to know what you were doing.

    I don’t remember ever playing any other games that used it besides Gran Tourismo 3. I imagine in something like a fighting game it would be too hard to reliably hit the right pressure to get the move you want and it would end up just feeling really frustrating.