I may be a decade late with this (and maybe not the first one to stumble upon solution I describe here, but googling didn't turn up anything of the sort), but I recently bought myself a real Playstation 2 to check out some games that I've experienced previously only through (glitchy at times) emulation, and to remember some old PC games I used to play as a kid (that were released on a PSone too).
Long story short, I had to install a modchip in it, since its DVD drive was almost blind and I have no way to obtain game DVDs at this point either, so I could load games off a network share by the means of OpenPS2Loader and POPStarter.
If you're not afraid of SMD rework and flash programming, you might just fix your Modbo you've bought from China that won't save, if you read on :)
If you're not afraid of SMD rework and flash programming, you might just fix your Modbo you've bought from China that won't save, if you read on :)
