GoKawiilA modder by the name of tschicki has built a custom "PlayStation 2 Portable" from scratch, powered by a reverse-engineered motherboard that features original PS2 silicon. The hardware sits inside a 3D-printed shell with proper controls, USB-PD charging, and a bespoke cooling solution. The project is entirely open-source and available on GitHub for anyone to follow along with, if you have the right skills and patience required.
Work on the PS2 Portable actually began way back in 2022, but it was only made public last year. The four-year development period really shows when you take a look at how polished the finished product is. The design is inspired by modern handhelds such as the ROG Ally; it has an ergonomic shape with large grips that house two 5000mAh batteries to enable up to 4.5 hours of playtime on a single charge.
On the front, there's an asymmetric control scheme that actually features hall-effect joysticks and face buttons from the PS Vita 2000 model. There's a blue accent piece running along the top, enveloping the triggers and the USB-C port, providing some variety in an otherwise minimalist aesthetic. You'll also find vents up there for exhaust. The rear is largely plain with a few threaded screws and a cutout with a grill for intake.
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Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: tschicki on GitHub) (Image credit: tschicki on GitHub)
The entire assembly is broken down into just two parts: a top half and a bottom half that screw into each other. The cooling is handled by a custom heatsink solution that uses the fan from the Switch Lite to keep the ICs under control.
This transitions us nicely into the actual crux of the project. The modder took six original ICs from the SCPH-7900x or SCPH-9000x PS2 models and put them on a custom motherboard.
Built upon the existing work of community veterans who have mapped out PS2 mainboards over the years, Tschicki reverse-engineered the entire circuitry of the console. They were then able to manually draw up a new motherboard layout that integrates the aforementioned original chips with completely new traces, video routing, and power management.
The donor ICs handle the bulk of the processing, such as the Emotion Engine (EE) and the Graphics Synthesizer (GS), while RP2040 microcontrollers are responsible for secondary tasks like thermals, controls, sound, and more. The modder used a custom FPGA-based video processor to get direct video out from the GS instead of going through an analog-to-digital converter that'd otherwise degrade the quality.
Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: tschicki on GitHub) (Image credit: tschicki on GitHub)
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