PS2 Looking to buy SCPH 18000 PS2

[Dynarec]

I am looking into possibly starting a small PS2 collection and found this PS2 on ebay for 80 dollars, but I have a couple of questions. The DVD drive on this PS2 looks different, it looks like a standard PC DVD drive. Was this common with the older 10000's series PS2's. The other question is did all the retail 18000's PS2 come with the PCMCIA/ethernet card, that allows the old school external drive to be connected, and does this PS2 have the PCMCIA/ethernet card on it? Finally what sort of issues can I expect from these older PS2's?

Japanese PS2 Including External Hard drive - Jailbroken FMCB | eBay

Playstation 2 + External Hard drive. - hard drive power adapter.

www.ebay.com

 

[Dynarec]

Now that I have looked into it. Yes this PS2 has the PCMCIA card and no the 10000's series PS2's did not come with the PCMCIA card. The card was part of the HDD kit that was sold for the 10000 series PS2's. Still though that DVD drive looks funky? but I kinda like it.

 

[la-li-lu-le-lo]

Apparently that system has been modified. If you look at the tray, it has the DVD-RW logo, which isn’t something the PS2 ever had. Like you suggested, they probably replaced the drive with a PC drive, though I don’t know why. The listing also says that it’s soft-modded.

 

[Nully]

I've never seen anything like that before. Maybe the OEM faceplate broke off and they glued that on there or took the drive out and stuffed that laptop DVD drive in there for some reason, I have no idea.