Is the slim PS3 capable of playing PS1 and PS2 games?

I used to have one of the bulky PS3's (recently deceased) and in the future, I am planning on buying a slim PS3 since it has extra data space. Now one thing that I really liked about my old model was that it enabled me to play PS1 and PS2 games on it, especially since there were some games that I couldn't get to work on either that worked perfectly on the PS3.

As far as I'm concerned, the slim PS3 does not have any backwards compatibility. I've asked two of my friends, both of whom own the slim model, if there was any way of playing PS1 and PS2 games on the slim PS3. One friend told me that the backwards compatibility could be downloaded and once you did that, then you could play them. My other friend told me that you can't play them at all.

The reason I'm asking this is because I have some PS1 and PS2 games that I really liked playing on my PS3 and I fear that once I switch to a slim one, then I will no longer be able to play them at all. In fact, if the slim model can't play them, I may consider buying another bulky model just so I can keep playing them.

So I ask of you, is there ANY way possible for me to play PS1 and PS2 games on a slim PS3?

Solution 1:

All PS3s are capable of playing PS1 games, whether they are on disc or downloaded from the PSN.

Only some earlier fat PS3 models can play PS2 disc-based games.

Recently though, Sony have begun adding "PS2 classics" to the PSN store, which are playable on all PS3s. They appear to be using a full software emulation to play these games.

Presumably they have been tweaking the emulator on a per-game basis to ensure that each game runs correctly. (The partial software emulation on the CECHCxx and CECHExx PS3 models was decent, but many games had small glitches.) There is only a very small selection of PS2 games available on PSN at the moment.