Another hardware review? For a console product? Yes.

4 Jan 06

National Championship in college football is going on tonight so I want to get an update up before the game. Shocking I know. In another shocker I have another hardware review for you. This one was purchased.

The Datel Max 64MB Memory Card is an accessory for the Playstation 2. If you own a Playstation 2, you know that Sony has only released one official memory card and that's 8MB in size. The Gamecube, which launched a year after the PS2, has already seen two increases in memory card size for that platform. The Xbox has a built in hard drive that gives near limitless save space so it has a limited memory card market. So the PS2 is really the only console now where you have to worry about running out of memory and swapping memory cards.

There were rumors of a memory stick adapter for the PS2. Nothing materialized. EGM reported a rumor of a larger official PS2 memory card, but nothing has yet materialized. I must admit I'm a bit baffled by this. Now that it's late in the PS2's life cycle most purchasers are unlikely to buy more than one more memory card. If Sony created a larger card, the production cost difference would be minimal thanks to dirt cheap memory. They would also reap the benefits of a large segment of current PS2 owners that would finally be motivated to buy another memory card. There must be some financial or contractual reason for Sony to stick with the 8MB cards, but I don't know what it is.

Markets abhor a vacuum, so in steps Datel to fill the need. Previously they had released a line of memory cards that were larger than 8MB, but they required a boot disk to function each time. Needless to say, for most gamers, the hassle outweighed the benefit. Apparently their reverse engineers have finally come through and produced a card that comes in sizes larger than 8MB and is simple plug and play. Max Memory cards come in flavors of 16, 32 and 64MB. I picked up the 64MB version during the accessory sale at Circuit City for about $30. For reference, I have an early model, big version PS2.

The card comes in simple plastic packaging consisting mostly of the card and a short instruction sheet. I booted the PS2 to its browser, plugged the card into slot one and boom, there it was. It showed up as a standard memory card but showed 64MB free. I tried different things to make sure the card worked including copying files and erasing them. Everything went fine at least until I tried the card with the PS2 multitap (the official PS2 peripheral that allows you to use up to three more controllers and memory cards). Strangely when inserted into the PS2 multitap, the Max memory card doesn't show up at all. In slot one or two, it works perfectly. That's something to keep in mind if you keep two multitaps connected at all times.

It's interesting to note that the PS2 didn't have any concerns that a memory card was showing up with more than 8MB. It appears the system was designed to be flexible with different sized memory cards. I noticed a few games only show four digits with regard to free space on a memory card, but it appears the system manages space on the memory card so regardless of what the display shows, if there's room on the memory card, the system will write the save file.

Once I determined everything was working, I started transferring all my saves to the Max memory card. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to copy a bunch of save files (that I know of anyway). It was a long, tedious process, but once I was done, I still had 50MB to spare. I didn't notice any difference in the speed writing or reading from the Max memory card and the official PS2 memory card. I did learn that there are certain files that can't be copied. Mostly those are system files (Network config, DVD driver) that are easy to recreate. Culdcept stood out as one of the only games that locked its save file. It was still pretty easy to go into the game and copy all the data over to the new memory card.

Right now, I all my game data on one card. I have plenty of room left for new game saves. I haven't encountered a read or write problem yet. Obviously reliability can only be measured over the long run. I'll keep you updated with any problems. Note: I also didn't have a slim PStwo to test it on. There shouldn't be problems, but I didn't verify that.

Pros: Lots of storage space. Low price. Easily used. No boot disk required. No more swapping memory cards.

Cons: Doesn't work in multitap. Feels a bit flimsy compared to the official memory card. Unknown reliability.

Overall: 4.5 stars out of 5. Recommended to any PS2 user who uses more than one memory card.

Edit: I just wanted to add that I tested the memory card with Sony's DNAS online authentication system. I was concerned that in addition to checking the disk and PS2, it might look at the memory card. Regardless, the card passed DNAS authentication using the Ratchet Deadlocked online disk which is the latest DNAS version I have. So no conflicts there.

Jason