I currently have a fat ps2, a spare 80gb hard drive, a spare usb key, a network adapter, hdLoader, Swap Magic 3.8 and a spare memory card. What I would like to know is if it possible to combine these in such a way that I can boot games from the HD without having to swap discs? i.e. I turn on the ps2 with no disc inserted and run hdLoader from the memory card or a usb stick
you'll need to use the independence exploit, which requires a ps1 disc, and some sort of cheating device with usb capability. otherwise, you'll need a modchip with flash memory.