Remember the first version of the PS3 we saw? It has a gazillion input ports for Firewire, USB, and even an internal coffee grinder. Naturally costs have to come down and dreams must be crushed, so all but half of those extrasensory ports went away in the final production.
As a result, the announcement of the eSATA mod earlier this month seemed ironic to me, if not awkward. Game Watch purchased the mysterious device and has a step-by-step photo journal of the installation process, which we've translated poorly in the story below. It's ugly as sin but get the job done.
This is the photo of the kit. It looks very medical and non inspiring. I've purchased hypodermic needles from 13 year old dealers with better packaging. This baggy contains the SATA controller bay and the new side panel with the port holes cut out, as shown in the somehow even less exciting photo that follows.
This may remind you of that old floppy drive you keep in a drawer. Dude. You're never going to need it again. Just throw it away already. Don't look back.
Also shown here is somebody else's external SATA hard drive kit. Game Watch used both to test the product and prove wether or not it was just a paperweight. The drive is styled to look like PS2 hardware, but instead it just looks like the packaging you throw away when you buy IBM mainframes. (That's a sysadmin failed sector Raid hard drive joke, because back in 95' ... oh, nevermind.)
Installation is easy: rip out your old drive, slide this one in. When you photograph yourself doing this make sure your hard drive is close by and watching you poke at with your fingers so everyone understands what's going on when they skim down the page and don't read your little funny paragraphs.
Last but not least, install your hard drive into the external bay and format it to FAT on your PC, then come back to the PS3 for insertion into the womb. The recommended drive is a Seagate Baracuda.
Ugly as hell, but you pirate kiddies will be all over it, I'm sure. Bet you can't wait to put your whole Naruto collection on it, can't you? Here's what you'll see if it was done correctly. Never mind that new rumored 120GB Xbox 360 -- here's a 300GB PS3! There are less hackish ways to accomplish this, but this one is perhaps the most safe and simple and safe to execute.
Obviously there is no guarantee Sony will support this functionality with future patches of the hardware, so go at it at your own risk.
Buyakasha.
Contest:
10:50 AM on 02.23.2007
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i am on the fence, my mame pc just died and if the ps3 can do the job, this would be the perfect substitute.
Hey Geese, whats up Ybor? Thought it was Ebor though...Im 20 minutes from you.
...oh oh yeah, and that custom HDD for the PS3... I think it's cool. I wish the 360 had a larger HDD (120GB is coming, we know) but it's not really my first priority. 20GB is big enough (for now) but I'm more concerned with the games and community features of a console, than I am with tech specs.
Besides, if the PS3 could stream from my computer instead of making me physically put the media on the PS3's local HDD, we really wouldn't need the extra space.
Wikipedia's Entry on Ybor City
I've been there once. Ate at a decent restaurant very near the movie theater and comedy club. Very clean in the middle. Trashy around the outside. And there's a Harpo's!
Go to Miami march 16th or I will drive to Gainsville and insult you from across the street.
.....I'll fuckin do it.
nothing negative from adding bigger HD space. those who got the 60gig ps3 and have downloaded everything from the playstatoin store have allready used up about 25g's.
Not that it is a nessesary thing to do but just shows 60g is not allot of space. however, One thing that would be useful, is if the PS3 could read external files in CD/DVD/HD like .avi, quicktime, flash, ect. Im not sure if those who installed Linux on your PS3 have opened those doors, but I think that would make allot more use of the PS3.
He dicho.