Neutrino is a "Small, Fast and Modular PS2 Device Emulator"[1]. This means it can read data from different devices and make the console believe it's read from the disc drive for example. It's developed by rickgaiser.
Compared to OPL, Neutrino follows a different design approach. It does not have a user interface by default and only focusses on what it's made for: emulating devices. This means that developement is usually faster than with OPL and allows for a higher focus on compatibility.
Neutrino can be combined with different user interfaces (UIs). Popular ones include NHDDL, OSD-XMB and PSBBN.
Supported Devices
Neutrino supports loading data from different devices, including:
- USB
- MX4SIO (SD card to Memory Card adapter)
- MMCE
- i.Link (only on PS2 Fat consoles up to SCPH-390xx)
- UDPBD/UDPFS (over Ethernet)
- ATA HDD (exFAT formatted HDD)
- APA HDD (APA formatted HDD with HDL partitions)[2]
Compatibility and speed varies by device. You can take a look at the offical list for a more detailed overview.
Setup
Since you're likely going to use Neutrino with a UI, follow the documentation corresponding to your UI for installation.
Once set up, usage for most devices is mostly plug and play. For USB, SD cards over MX4SIO or HDD, you simply need to format your device as exFAT, copy over your ISO files and connect it. On some UIs like NHDDL, you also need to edit your config file.
UDPBD/UDPFS
UDPBD and UDPFS on the other hand require a bit more set up but are still pretty simple to use, especially compared to SMB which is often used with OPL. UDPBD allows sharing block devices over the network, but has largely been superceded by UDPFS which allows sharing a file system (like a directory) over the network. UDPFS is great for PS2 Slim consoles since it offers a fast way to load games (faster than USB, MX4SIO or MMCE) and can be used on any Slim console thanks to the ethernet port. For PS2 Fat consoles, an official network adapter is required.
Don't forget to give your console a static IP address in your network. Afterwards, you need to edit the config files for Neutrino before copying Neutrino over to your PS2. These can be found under /neutrino_vX.X/config. You'll need to edit bsd-udpbd.toml, bsd-udpbd-hdd.toml or bsd-udpfs.toml, depending on what you want to use. While you're at it, you can just edit all three. Simply replace the IP address (ip=...) with the one of your console.
There are many different implementations available, many more than listed here, but this should get you an overview to get started.
udpfs_server.py
udpfs_server.py is the reference implementation for UDPFS, written in Python. If you are using Windows, you will need to install Python if you haven't already. On Linux and MacOS it's usually already installed. Check by opening a terminal and entering python3 (Linux/Mac) or python (Windows) to check.
A directory can easily shared like this on Linux/Mac:
python3 ./udpfs_server.py -d /path/to/ps2games
Or like this on Windows:
python .\udpfs_server.py -d \path\to\ps2games
For more detailed instructions on how to use it, check out Neutrino's documentation.
udpfsd by pcm720
udpfsd is written in Go, compiled executables are available for basically every OS. udpfsd has some advantages compared to the reference implementation, like supporting multiple consoles simultaneously. It's similarly easy to use.