The other option is find a mate with a modded machine and use that to make your McBoot memory card. You could do this using the Independence Exploit (though this won't work on slim PS2s). However since it's now freely available for normal memory cards the snag is that you need a way of running unsigned code just to launch the installer on a PS2. The exploit is a bit tricky in that the executable must be signed with the individual memory card's key (MagicGate) - so until recently you could only do this on one of those third party Memor32 memory cards that hooked up to the PC via USB. It's in beta testing so it won't be long and it ought to allow ripping to HD and the use of PS2 memory cards. There is a bloke working on a PSX emulator for PS2 (rather than running in BC mode).
The emulators aren't great sadly, and lack the finish of the Xbox or PSP ones. It supports FAT32 USB Mass Storage, and Windows shares over LAN, so it ought to breathe a bit of life into old forgotten consoles: The other bonus is that nowadays the PS2 has a decent DivX/Xvid player called SMS (Simple Media System). All you need is a Network Adapter and a spare IDE hard disk.
FREE MCBOOT PS2 USB FAT32 INSTALL
The really good news is that if you have an old chubby PS2, you can install HD Loader. There is an elaborate way of reburning patched ISOs in DVD-Video mode that allows yarring but I haven't tried that. In summary you can now run unsigned code on an unmodded machine - BUT you still can't fool the disc validity checking. Las 8c (grafa que viene por separado en la parte trasera junto al nmero de serie) no funcionan en un principio, aunque puede que alguna s lo haga dependiendo de la versin final de Bios.
Not sure if anyone's noticed already but it seems that a few months ago someone found a way of exploiting the fact that the PS2 firmware looks for a DVDPlayer update on the memory card at boot time. Modelos de Playstation 2 compatibles con Free McBoot (en realidad lo son o no segn la versin de Bios): Todas las FAT.