Racketboy

Just "found" a PS2 with the Sony 40GB HDD and a network adaptor.
It's got files from FF-XI and Socom Navy Seals II on it.
I own neither game, cannot access the files, and am currently not into online gaming (still exploring the wonders of my SNES and TurboGraphx16 collections

Newbie question: What can I do with this rig?
Do I want to keep it? Room is no problem...

Free McBoot:
http://sksapps.com/index.php?page=fmcb.html

You can follow the guides to create your own if you have a suitable device or send your memory card to someone like me who can make you one. You just need to pay shipping both ways ($2-3 total).

Personally, I only use HD Loader so I can run my games off the hard drive (the compatibility is somewhere around 75%).

The official use for the network adapter was to play games online (obviously) and the hard drive was to save the data for FFXI (and other games?).

I never messed with Free MCboot, but it sounds wonderful. Although, I do have a hard drive in my PS2 and I use HDloader and I love it. I had the network adapter from back in the day, so I got a hard pressed HDloader disc and put it an extra 80GB hard drive I had lying around. With it, you can load games onto the hard drive and play them off the hard drive (with out the need for the actual game disc). This has three benefits that I know of. One, you're not using the DVD drive in the PS2 so you're not putting any wear and tear on it. It'll last longer. Two, if you were so inclined, you can download PS2 games and put them on the hard drive and play them. And three, games load MUCH faster off the hard drive then from the disc.

Do the games that work work without any flaws at all?

And another one would be that you can have 50 games on it and do not have to change the discs at all, so you would have all the fun with non of the hassle

BTW: Can you copy the games onto your HDD directly, or do you have to download them from the internetz?

Retail games can be copied directly to the hard drive. But it takes some time.

As for the games working properly, I'd say that the ones that do work are actually working better than they do from a disc since loading times are decreased. There is no other noticeable difference.

HDAdvance/HDLoader. Play PS2 games from Hard Drive.

There are three ways to do this:

1. One is by using HD Loader & the PS2 DVD drive. You put the game in your DVD drive and then run HD Loader. This takes awhile to do.

2. Use hdl_dumb/hdl_serv to network transfer the game. This is very slow.

3. The best way is to use WinHIIP to transfer the game from your PC to the hard drive. Personally, I use a USB to IDE cable ($12) to hook the PS2 drive to the PC. Then startup WinHIIP and transfer the games that way. It's very fast.

If they're compatible, yes.
Google for "hdloader compatibility list".

Here's one: http://www.absoluteanime.com/hdloader.html

Can any PC hard drive be used with the network adapter?