/vr/ - Retro Games

So some time ago I killed my PS2 fat (Which also was kind of a memento from my late dad) trying to see which modchip it had. Some time later I bought another PS2 fat (a 39001) at a flea market, but the HDD port died when I changed the hard drive. Some days ago I wanted to check it out to sell it (its optical drive still worked) and didn't output video.
Long story short, I was kinda considering getting another PS2 fat at the flea market, but I also have a slim which I kinda neglected because I had my fat ps2 with a hard drive, for the lulz I configured OPL with ethernet and well... it seems solid, I have to try more games, but I'm seriously considering to just not buy any more fat ps2s.
How is your experience playing games through ethernet in OPL? Is it really the second fastest option? (behind hard drive and ahead of memory card sd readers, DVDs and USB) or are the memory card sd readers and DVDs faster? How's compatibility, do double layer games work fine? Is it similar to hard drive compatibility?