[charlie_ps2]

Arakon gives good advice.

On your Messiah point - it's not too tricky on a v5 PS2 except that you need access to both sies of the mobo. But it's not easy.

Nothing good comes at a cheap price in terms of effort nor perhaps cost if you get someone else to do it.

Origachip is a briliant chip and a good compromise. It's 15 wires but the same 8 difficult wires as for Messiah are present in origa.

My advice is for you to save for the 70 pounds it costs to isntal an Origa or Messiah. Messiah costs between 60 and 70 pounds epending on supplier and Origa costs around 25 pounds. Origa does everything but backups require a single swap using AR2/Gs2 or DVD Region X.