PS2 Slimline guide: external USB hard drive & game playing (NO CHIP REQ'D)

ok thanks a lot

 

Dear smokyrain,

Just got my USB 2.0 Housing with a 320GB IDE Western Digital HD. Unfortunately, same problem with loading USBAdvan.ELF...

This is starting to sound rather comical...hehe...

When I load SWAPMAGIC, it loads up perfectly. But for some reason it fails to load up SWAPMAGIC.ELF (i.e. changed from USBAdvan.ELF)

Can you please help or anyone who has a V15 ps2?

Cheers,
Albert.

 

Hi, I hope I can help you out. As I said above PS2's are USB 1.1 and you need to use a USB external drive that is backwards compatible with the USB 1.1.

That is why I said you need a USB drive, not a IDE drive in a USB housing.
Now I may not be 100% sure on that but the ps2 later slim versions do not work with IDE drives. The older ones could use the network adaptor and hook up an ide drive but not the newer ones.


Sorry if you have misunderstood my information in above posts.

 

Hello smokyrain
I got a question for ya I was reading your post about how the USB Harddrive has to be 1.1. So I was looking at this harddrive.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...rive&lp=10&type=product&cp=1&id=1155069521890

Will this work for my ps2 I have the old fat style ps2.

 

Yes just checked your link and it says:
High-speed USB 2.0 interface; backward compatible with USB 1.1

But it also says:USB bus-powered; no AC adapter required for most computers

Thats fine for computers but for your PS2 it is going to need AC Power.
So no this won't work with yours.

Here is an example of what I have except mine is 250GB.

 

Has anyone tried to run Formula 1 2005 or Formula 1 2006 on your hard drive(both PAL region)? I see compatible, incompatible, yet I have no details on whether or not you have to DNAS swap the games(they both have online play). Anyone have insight on this?

 

i'd been trying to get my v15 PS2 (PAL) to play games from the USB HDD and i've finally figured out how after weeks of experimenting.

and it works every time (providing you are using games that actually will work with it)

this is how i did it:

take a USB hard drive formatted in FAT32 (use USBExtreme.exe to format if u need to)
put USBADVANCE.ELF on it,
load several games onto it using USBINSANE.EXE (or USBExtreme.exe)
(for some reason it wouldn't work when only 1 game was on it)
build a CD (using cdgenPS2.exe) with LaunchELF on it: open LaunchELF.CNF in notepad, assign the following command to one of the buttons:
LK_Cross_E1 = mass:/USBADVANCE.ELF
Burn that CD,
Plug in the HDD to your PS2 USB port,
Pop in the CD and turn on your PS2.
now this is the important part:
when the menu comes up, take the disc out and close the tray/lid,
then launch the USBADVANCE.ELF using the assigned button,
you then will be able to just select a game and it load it (black screen, then wait a while... eventually it will work, if it is compatible with USB Advance)

Optionally, instead of taking the disc out (and this is the way i do it because it's easier):
after LaunchELF loads, you can just open the tray/lid and leave the disc still in it,
then when you launch USB Advance you will find it stalls at the menu, just close the tray/lid for a moment and quickly open it again when you see the USB Advance game list

on the game list screen pick one and press X, if it says "loading... " for more than 1 second, no amount of waiting will make it work. if the screen turns black, good!
the hard drive should be reading, if it has a light it should be blinking.

good luck

 

Can I use LaCie Mobile Hard Drive?

 

try it and see
i've tried two drives and both have worked (as long as its been converted from NTFS to FAT32 - i used partition magic to do that)
one was a 2.5" hdd in a portable case, powered only by the usb port, and one 3.5" hdd in an enclosure powered by an AC Adapter
the thing is i notice there is some slight noise on the screen when using the AC powered one, so it's probably best to use one that is powered by the usb port only (2.5") thats if you have one to spare, they're quite expensive and not very large.

 

i formatted by USB drive and and then installed a game using ul_install.exe

does it still needs a usb extreme dvd?

thnx

 

see here

and here

 

Have you managed to get this to work... I have read with some drives like my own even.... I first formatted it with NTSF.... then using ul_format.exe I formatted it with FAT32.
Also do you have all 3 files in your SWAPMAGIC Folder or just the elf file?
And I was going to mention on that other drive you had and screen came up blank could just be because the game is not compatible or it needs patching to be compatible.

 

ok will try again today

thanks

 

you can get the latest LaunchELF here

 

how to make cd with cdgenps2?

 

edited out.....

 

thnx smokyrain but I was using cdgenps2 not cdvdgen

 

no - that's a different program,
don't bother with CDVDgen its too complicated
CDgenPS2 is all you need,

so open cdgenps2 so you are ready to add stuff to it,

then open a new text document, put in:

(change PAL to NTSC if you need)
save it as SYSTEM.CNF and drag that into cdgenps2

then open another text document and put in:

(change the USBADVANCE.ELF filename to match the one on your hard drive)
then save that as LAUNCHELF.CNF and drag that also into cdgenps2

then rename BOOT.ELF (from the uLaunchElf archive) to LAUNCHELF.ELF and also drag that into cdgenps2

also, i usually include the following files:

LIBSD.IRX, MAIN.IRX, MCMAN.IRX, MCSERV.IRX, PADMAN.IRX, SDRDRV.IRX, SIO2MAN.IRX, USBD.IRX

but you probably don't need them if all you're going to do is launch one thing from your hard drive

also, put a file on there that is 50-100MB to pad the cd out so it is not too small table of contents, otherwise it will be hard for the ps2 to read, any file will do, just rename it DUMMY.DAT and drag that into cdgenps2.
then click the IMG button to save the cd image, burn it, preferably at less than 24x

then u can try booting it with your hard drive plugged in (don't forget to eject or take out the disc as i mentioned in an earlier post)

 

thanks wangle... I will try that now

 

sorry ..... I had read that too fast I guess.