PS2 Region Mod

[gannon]

I think I found the spot on the ps2 where you can do a region mod without a mod chip.
I'm not sure if this is really it, but the spots are labelled J, U, E, A, and D. I'm sure they stand for Japan, U.S., Europe, and Asia, although I'm not sure what the D stands for.

This is in the area of the a/v port and on the bottom of the ps2 mb v4.
I haven't tried anything out with this yet, but it seems like it should work.

[Martin]

Cool,
I'll need to get a PS2 now.

[gannon]

You'll probably have to get a used older one though. I checked out my v5 motherboard and it didn't have any signs of these points, but since my v4 one had them, I'm sure the v1-3 do aswell.

[NFG]

I'm relatively certain if it was this easy to bypass Sony's disgusting territory lockouts someone else would have noticed it already.  What happened when you tried it?

[gannon]

My current V4 board is broken so I haven't been able to test it. I was just searching the board to see if I blew any components and noticed that this area has all the different ps2 regions that I know of listed as letters. Also, I have a u.s. region ps2 and it just happens that the chip or jumper is connected on the U line.

[Aidan]

To be honest, both sides of the resistor appear to be connected to the ground plane. If that's true, then the resistor is there only to tell someone who is manually handling the board which region it is designated for. That would make sense, as otherwise it'd a little hard to tell which board supports which region.

[NFG]

both sides of the resistor appear to be connected to the ground plane.

Hah, yeah, good call.  Not entirely sure based solely on that pic, but well spotted nonetheless.

[gannon]

Yeah, but if you look at a reall board they aren't, they seem to be connected to a middle layer in the pcb.

[Aidan]

Break out your multimeter and check! That's probably the easiest way to find out for sure. I'd be surprised if the mod was that simple to be honest with you.