You lose the ethernet port with those chinese SATA ones, I'd recommend actually modding an official one for SATA.
I never bothered with the network adapter on the original adapter or sata adapter. It's so easy to pull out the HD and just plug it into the pc via usb.
But what about the online GAEMS (and booting isos from outside the HDD via network)?
Resident Evil Outbreak is still gold to this day. I ain't giving up ethernet lol
I didn't even know online games still worked on the ps2. I don't think I played any online games on the ps2. I did on the og Xbox but not ps2. Yea, I guess if your still doing stuff online it makes sense. I also never tried running games through the network. I did transfer iso's through the network but for me never found it to be a necessity.
Its just to easy to unscrew 2 screws pull out the adapter and plug in the hard drive to the pc. It's been awhile since I added games but I think I also added stuff through the thumb drive.
I suppose it really is since transfering through ethernet is slower than directly into the hdd via SATA, but I find it to be too unwieldy of a process myself. Maybe if I had one of those neat USB3 SATA hdd docks.
Yeah there are several (revived) online ps2 games but you can count on fingers the games that aren't a ghost town. Outbreak and its sequel has a surprisingly active community, you can hop in any time of the day and join a full 4-man game if you're not too picky on difficulty settings or scenario configs (and if you are just create your own, you'll fill it up with relative ease).
Funny thing is that I used to goof off in Battlefield 2 on the PS2 in 2014 on official servers. Some lasted a damn long time and no one really knows why lol
Will outbreak work online if you don't have the disc and are running the game from the hard drive? I think I'll give it shot for shit and gigs.