Best places to buy chips and HDD troubles

[Cyber Akuma]

Its a 30001R, which apparently the all the guides I read identify as a possible V4 or V, there is no screw in the HDD bay so it isnt a v5 or v6. Is there any other way I cna make sure? Im really hoping that its a v7 and not a v4 so that I wont have to manually replace my lazer every 1-2 years. Itll be a long time till I can afford a new ps2 or a premod.

BTW, I just heard that the DMS3 lets you output to any video mode you want regardless of the original game, that means I can finally play some of those PSX pal imports I have in NTSC mode right?, my tv dosent support pal. Guess im going DMS3, especially if the harddrive supprot works........... now I just hope that it works with cheatdisks.

Ill wait like another 2-4 months though, by them the hdd support and stuff will probably be confirmable or not. I can mod my xbox in the meantime and get some of those imports I want for my ps2 as they come out before they start becoming hard to find. I can mod it later then.

The only thing I am worried about is that if my ps2 compeltely kicks the bucket after I have bought FFXI, I would need to reformat the HDD in order to make it fit in a new ps2, AND get it remodded......

Well, if that happens I can probably just take the old chip out of my broken ps2, so itll at least cost half as much.