you have to buy something. Look at how much money your going to save, and you don't want to spend $25?
Check out these : http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/337567 http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/291684 http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/87923 http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/320910 you should look around the PS2 Forum and bother yourself instead of letting people write things out as there are several good guides out there.
It won't work with a Fire International/MadCatz Gameshark, or AR MAX though. Needs to be the old Datel/Interact Gameshark or an AR2v2. And you'll still need some way to be able to swap discs without the PS2 knowing. It also never worked with every game, so in the long run, you'd be better off buying a Swap Magic/Fliptop combo, cos you'll most likely spend more on wasted discs trying to get games to work that dont with the GS/AR method.
cody, what kind of ps2 do you have? FAT or slim? There are guides on Afterdawn that show you how to use AR Max on both. I use AR Max, a memory stick and a CD-R to launch my backup DVD-Rs. This whole process is pretty short. And if you have a PSX game and a memory card, you can make a trigger disk, cutting AR Max out of the picture. Even faster loading time.
Check this thread: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/337567 You'll need AR Max and the mem stick that comes with it. That thread will tell you everything you need to know. And there are a lot of answers in posts after the guide as well. Quickly, this is the skinny: 1. Load CDLOADER.ELF and COGSWAP.ELF onto the mem stick with Max Creator. 2. Make boot cd with uLaunch ELF on it(Specific details on this in the guide.) 3. Load AR Max cheat cd on PS2(make sure you have inserted the mem stick in USB slot.) 4. Choose the Media Player. 5. Media Player will load showing CDLOADER.ELF as the file to play. Press X. CDLoader will load. 6. Bottom left corner says 'PS2 CD.' Now swap the AR Max cheat cd for the CD-R you made with whatever method you use(just don't push eject.) Press X. 7. uLaunch.ELF will load. Press Select. Press O. Now choose COGSWAP.ELF when you see it. Then choose OK. Press O. All you did was assign the O button to the CogSwap program on your mem stick, then pressing O to load CogSwap. This method is a bit different than the 'USB Stick Method' in the guide I linked above. It is the easier solution suggested by another member and posted in the comments of that guide. If you do have a mem stick, you should skip down and follow that. Just skim through the thread, get the general idea, then look at the comments to find the method that I outlined here. I'll find the name of the poster and post back here later. good luck edit: poster is Tdude. About 3 or 4 posts after the guide, you'll find the steps of the easier method.
wow thanx for all the help guys! this is one of the best support sites ive ever seen. i now have 4 guides on how to boot backups. i will try them all tonight and let you know how each one worked out. thanx alot!