PS1/2 How do i make a freemcboot card on a chipped ps2?

[codezer0]

As per thread title...

I have a chipped ps2. Wife has a stock phat ps2. I want to basically make a "freemcboot" memory card so that it is able to have at least soft-mod goodness. But all the guides i can find only seem to talk about buying an Action Replay for ps2 to start the process... Which is like "good luck" finding that now. So, is there a way for me to do this from my console, to have something that i can then gift/give to the wife's console?

Much obliged anf grateful for the assistance; hopefully be able to find a ps2 memory card i can use for the exercise by the time i get a fitting response.

 

[Ryccardo]

Burn a wLaunchELF CD (you can find a premade iso with an outdated version of uLaunchELF, but it's fine for this use - since you can just run the new one from USB if you really wanted)

Download the official FMCB installer (which includes a recent version of wLaunchELF), extract it to an USB (MBR/FAT16 or 32) drive (any folder is fine but try to avoid long path names, spaces, and symbols)

Insert both into console, start the disc, then go to file manager > mass > [FMCB installer executable] and install it

(Use "install" and multi-model or multi-region as desired, avoid the "multi install" option unless you know what you're doing)

 

[migles]

yeah, basically launch the installer with the modchip, funny how before every guide that i seen would had a tutorial part about using modchips
i believe modchips allow you to load certain files from usb if you hold a certain button (like R1) but i might be wrong
either that, or burn the installer\launcher in a disc, but i am not really sure what do you need to be into the disc...

if you can't find a way to do that, well i pretty much guess you can burn an action replay disc or exploitable game to launch the installer

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Download the official FMCB installer (which includes a recent version of wLaunchELF), extract it to an USB (MBR/FAT16 or 32) drive (any folder is fine but try to avoid long path names, spaces, and symbols)

that site is down?

 

[Ryccardo]

Yes, he moved to https://sites.google.com/view/ysai187/home/projects/fmcbfhdb

 

[lucks]

The installer should boot from ulaunchelf
Burn ule or run it in some way and follow fmcb instructions, just install as normal if you have the same model, or multi if they are different.

You can then install fmcb to a second ps2 mc from your wife ps2 if you want a lighter (and more stable?) fmcb and use the first mc as a standard mc.

 

[RHOPKINS13]

Kinda unrelated, but you didn't mention whether your chipped PS2 was phat or slim.

If you get a network adapter for the phat PS2, they generally have an IDE connector where you can install a hard drive (if you don't have one already, some third party adapters let you use SATA drives instead.)

You can install FreeHDBoot, which is basically the same as FreeMCBoot but off of the hard drive instead. So you can use your softmodded phat PS2 without needing a memory card in the slot. You can also use Open PS2 Loader (OPL) to load games off of the hard drive, which has better compatibility than loading off of a USB hard drive, which is what you'd be stuck with on a slim.

 

[codezer0]

Both her and mine are phat ps2 models. But from what i gather, she did have a slim one at one point. I did find the power supply for a slim while trudging through stuff we could get rid of.

Didn't even know freeHDboot was a thing. Been stuck on hdloader 0.8c on a burned disc because i was never able to find an iso online for (i think) 0.9c for the final build of it. Would be nice to not need that cd-r anymore.

What i wish i knew, was if the official hdd tools were ever cracked, because i did have a few games that either claimed to support the official hdd or had undocumented support for it (such as nfl 2k5). Lord knows re outbreak was impossible to play without an hdd.

 

[Ryccardo]

What i wish i knew, was if the official hdd tools were ever cracked

Define tools, all official HDD software only supports 28-bit addressing (137 GB or so - using larger disks means limiting them to that size of only 28-bit software is used on it, severe corruption risk if 48-bit software like most homebrews also are), and of course only original Sony OEM disks

These limitation can be patched (both have been done for the HDDOSD, the latter is relatively standardized and should be portable to all HDD software, large disks are in general a bad idea performance wise unless you cheat and use a SSD due to the combination of the intrinsic inefficiency of APA + the IOP only having 2 MB of memory, which after loading all needed drivers, is insufficient for caching the entire partition table on such a disk, resulting in a huge number of head repositionings)


As for installing FreeHDBoot and/or HDDOSD, the basic logic doesn't change: enter *LaunchELF,
go to its HDD Manager and format the disk (for this I really recommend using the newest wLaunchELF as opposed to the commonly circulated CD version, you can find it bundled with the FMCB installer as BOOT.ELF),
copy (pre-patched) HDDOSD files to the disk if you want it,
run the FMCB installer and install FHDB (required to install the bootloader and enable the HDD boot flag* on the console),
optionally remove FHDB if you only want HDDOSD

* unlike what the name implies, it's not required on a PS2 (as opposed to a PSX) to boot from HDD - but if not enabled the disk will start, stop, and start again every time the console is turned on

 

[codezer0]

This is the first i heard of this. Up until now, i had believed that the only way to get the sony ps2 hdd stuff was with the original 40gb hard drive. And the only way to get it to show up as an official hdd for games was if you had this to begin with.

I had considered even say, partitioning a hard drive at one point to have space for the stuff that supported the official hdd functionality and then using the rest for hdloader, but never found any progress in that regard. I had assumed then, that the process or software was never patched to work with anything but the stock drive.

 

[codezer0]

Okay, following the advice, I did get a ulaunch 4.43 disc to run, and then from there was able to run the fmcb installer on one of the memory cards. Already confirmed it can run on the Wife's PS2.

Now, about this HDD stuff... unfortunately the bigger IDE hard drive I found that I was hoping to use, is a WD drive, which of course is spaced too far apart to physically work with the PS2's network adapter. Whoever was the numbnuts at WD that decided to do such a thing should get their head banged in.

Aaaaanyway. Now I definitely want to know how to set up the HDD with this new information. As this is the first I've heard of it actually working, and my attempts to search for stuff about this has obviously come up with nothing to even suggest it was possible.

Obvious goal being to be able to install and load games off the HDD, but also to be able to have it show up for games that support the official PS2 HDD features. At worst, I don't want to be at less functionality than I was with booting up HDLoader to install and load games that way.

 

[RHOPKINS13]

Some third party adapter will give you SATA instead of IDE. I've been running FreeHDBoot and Open PS2 Loader for years with very little problems, but I don't think I've ever tried running a game that required the hard drive.

 

[codezer0]

I have a couple of IDE hard drives on hand... a travelstar 160gig that I was using for all this time with HDLoader... but also had this WD 250GB drive.

Well, trying to take off the shielding to space out the connectors for the WD seems to be causing me a problem in that now it just freezes when it should be loading freeHDboot, or freemcboot for that matter.

Okay, now I got the adapter back together... used a usb hdd dock to format the deskstar drive, put it back in the PS2, run uLaunchELF to install fhdb on it, it confirms install went correctly, but when it should be booting... it just freezes. What am I doing wrong?

 

[codezer0]

Okay, seems for the moment, on the chipped ps2, i have to force disable the modchip for free(mc/hd)boot to work.

Found an elf for OPL, which is progress... I guess. Problem is that when i load the app and pop a game to have it rip/install, it doesn't do anything. No prompt or anything. What am I doing wrong here? Nevermind it already forced formatted over the original drive i was using with HDloader.

Trying to figure out how to proceed here. For what it's worth, my chipped ps2 has a genuine Matrix Infinity on the last known firmware, version 1.93. I might have to try again to mod the network adapter to see if i can get the bigger WD HDD to work in it. But also want to stick this Hitachi in the wife's ps2, since it seems that its optical drive is stuck shut. So being able to install games from my working console to move onto it would be an enormous help.

 

[Ryccardo]

OPL doesn't backup games, you will need HDLGameInstaller for that (but while it can read original discs - and non-originals on a chipped console too - you can get superior performance and less read errors if you put the disc in a PC and use HDLGManClient, bundled with HDLGameInstaller; or if you want even more performance, connect the disk directly to a PC and use HDL-Dump or HDL-Dumb)

It probably helps to learn how software is supposed to be installed to the HDD - you have a (logical*) parent partition for every application, supposed to be formatted with the PFS filesystem, and having a header containing an icon and metadata (like memory card saves do) and further metadata for telling the console how to run it if selected in the HDDOSD (like a disc's system.cnf)...

* an APA partition has a size multiple of 128MB and may well be fragmented due to an arbitrary restriction on the maximum size of a fragment and minimum number of these blocks, so a 2.5 GB partition may actually be made of two 1GB and one 512MB - it is each of these blocks (not directly visible in any software except in WinHiip) that take up space in the cache

...but while ths system.cnf can point to a file on an optical disc or PFS filesystem, the HDDOSD has an undocumented option to boot a ((fake)signed) executable from the partition header; and this is the only way to make disc backups bootable on HDDOSD, since for historical reasons disc backups are not inside a PFS filesystem (and they will break if you defragment the HDD)

If you use OPL to run your disc backups, it uses its own way (and configuration) to run the games, as opposed to the "MiniOPL/diskload" that HDLGameInstaller (and, with the included boot.elf, HDL-Dump) set up - but the installation itself is the same regardless of the launcher you choose!

If all you want to use the large disk (with large number of partitions) for is OPL, then the performance considerations are no big deal since it does things its own way, but with most every other homebrew (and certainly with any official software) the risks/annoyances previously mentioned apply...

 

[codezer0]

I'm sorry, i did not understand any of that.

All i know is that previously, i had a cd r with hdloader 0.8c, so of course modchip required to get the ps2 to boot that disc. But with it, it would format the hdd, and from its menu i can pop in a legit or burned game, have it rip to the storage and let me run the game off of the hdd instead of the disc. What I'm reading here from others, implies that it's also possible to then format/partition the HDD, so that it can then read and behave like an official PS2 HDD for those games that do support the feature.

My end goal is as follows:

• At least, get to the same functionality I had before (with HDLoader), in freeHDboot or similar, so that later I can move that drive over to the wife's PS2 console, and have it operate and work the same way, even if it has the broken optical drive.
• At the peak, also have space reserved so that games/apps that used the official PS2 HDD can do so as if it were an OEM disk, and maybe remaining space used for the previously mentioned feature

That's what I'm trying to go for.

I already have the (base, I guess it'd be called) freemcboot card. but what do I do with it? because I've seen videos showing all sorts of apps but I don't even know how to get such apps installed. What would I need to have installed? What would the HDD need to have installed? This is all very new territory for me, so in that respect I am a bit of a newbie. it also didn't help that part of why I waited this long to start is because literally nothing I could find would show how to do it with a chipped console... all of it seemed to either require an exploitable game or buying an Action Replay PS2 with its proprietary USB thing. Which after my own traumas with PS2's up to the one I presently have, is something I'd rather avoid doing as much as possible. Forgive me for sounding very much like a newbie, but this is very confusing and I'm really not sure where to proceed from here. Because at present, it seems all I really have, is just a base freeMCboot card, the wife's ps2 (no chip) and my chipped PS2 to go on. And not a whole lot of info of how to do this stuff.

 

[Ryccardo]

and let me run the game off of the hdd instead of the disc. What I'm reading here from others, implies that it's also possible to then format/partition the HDD, so that it can then read and behave like an official PS2 HDD for those games that do support the feature.

No problem here, the partitions HDLoader uses for disc backups (which with minor differences such as storing per-game configuration separately, is the same as OPL's format) are APA compatible, so not only they don't conflict with other HDD software but in fact requires the disk to be APA formatted in the first place

(The contents of these partitions are NOT conforming to the standards since they don't use the PFS filesystem, but luckily the standards also specifies that what an application does with their partitions should be nobody else's business)

At least, get to the same functionality I had before (with HDLoader), in freeHDboot or similar, so that later I can move that drive over to the wife's PS2 console, and have it operate and work the same way, even if it has the broken optical drive.

No problem (read my last point)

At the peak, also have space reserved so that games/apps that used the official PS2 HDD can do so as if it were an OEM disk, and maybe remaining space used for the previously mentioned feature

Any official software will refuse to use any drive that wasn't licensed by Sony (they know because they support a proprietary identification command), unless you use "ATAD patched" versions of them, and even then it may cause corruption on disks over 137 GB unless they are also "LBA48 patched" (which I'm not sure if it is a thing trivially doable on the average commercial game)

But apart of these issues, you can freely mix PFS partitions (official software, homebrew, media files, PS1 games...) and HDL partitions (PS2 game backups) and even other mostly hypothetical types (a Linux distro that can be installed to the HDD without having to dedicate the entire disk to it) on the same disk without issues, no such thing as deciding in advance how much to use for one type or the other

I already have the (base, I guess it'd be called) freemcboot card. but what do I do with it? because I've seen videos showing all sorts of apps but I don't even know how to get such apps installed. What would I need to have installed? What would the HDD need to have installed?

FMCB is, as far as the console is concerned, an update to the OSDSYS (the program, normally coming from the rom chip, responsible for all things you see when you boot the console with or without a disc)
The main feature added by FMCB is the ability to run homebrew (actually, any .elf executable for the PS2) from memory card, USB, or [a PFS partition on the] HDD; and you have a relatively wide choice on how to start the desired app too, since you can make it boot by default, and/or if a button is held down at the right time during startup, and/or (not on all console models but all western ones) by adding further choices to the "Browser/System Configuration" screen

So for example you can make a setup where booting the console automatically starts OPL unless a disc is inserted or a button is being held down, which would be fairly accessible to the average gamer while still giving you a way to run the OSDSYS and manage the memory cards or, through the added options, run other homebrew

FHDB is, for most practical intents and purposes, not different from FMCB except of course for installing to HDD instead of memory card!


- Get a Network Adapter (preferably an official one, there are SATA conversion kits if you really prefer said interface) and install it (with a disk, of course) in the console - with the mechanical power switch off!!!
- Insert the FMCB card and turn the console on, on a typical setup you will get the modified OSDSYS with added options, hopefully one of them will be "LaunchELF" which will fire up a more or less outdated version of, well *LaunchELF
- Extract the FMCB installer on an USB drive and plug it in (it should appear as "mass:"), go inside the folders you extracted and run BOOT.ELF (the newest wLaunchELF)
- Go to MISC/HDDManager, press R1 and format (this will write a new APA partition "table" and create the standard system partitions: __mbr, __net, __system, __sysconf, and __common)
- Go again to mass: and start the FMCB installer, remove the FMCB memory card, use the "install FHDB" option and reboot the console
- Without having HDDOSD installed, the default configuration will look wonky (incorrect symbols on the screen), you can ignore the issue, go to the FMCB configurator and reset everything to defaults, or "find" and put HDDOSD files on the HDD (wink wink)
- Put the OPL executable on an USB drive (there are 2 main versions of OPL, the official ifcaro series, and the "daily builds" series with added PS1 integration)
- Go to wLaunchELF's HDD manager again
- Create a partition called "+OPL" which will be used for game configuration and cover art, of an appropriate size (try to estimate decently, but you can expand PFS partitions such as this one later)
- Create a partition called "__.POPS" which will be used for PS1 game backups, if you are interested in imperfect but not that bad software emulation
- Copy your OPL elf somewhere on HDD, I personally put it in the +OPL partition
- Go to the FMCB configurator, "E1 launch options", note how most of the options read OSDSYS: change the topmost one to point to the OPL file (that will make it autoboot)
- Go to the "hacked osdsys" section, make sure the "skip updates" options are enabled (unless you want to be able to use FMCB from memory card if you insert it again, or have set up HDDOSD respectively), "return to browser" off, "skip disc boot" to taste
- You can also fiddle with the (second from top?) option you can change from 1 to 100, that is for adding homebrews to the main menu by specifying the name to be displayed and up to three paths to try to load it from; practice by adding OPL to it
- save the configuration to HDD!
- Reboot the console and OPL should start, configure it (mainly by making the "HDD mode" to auto-enabled, the default page to HDD, and remembering to save the changes...)
- Go add PS2 games to it! Whether by putting the HDD in a PC and using HDL-Dum*, or by getting HDLGameInstaller on the console and running it (from wLaunchELF or adding it directly to FHDB, at your choice) and using a disc or a computer via ethernet!

 

[codezer0]

Wow, thanks for the instructions! Can't wait until i can get home and start working on this.

Also, realized that wife's ps2 doesn't have its own network adapter. Wondering if i should make the effort to find one for cheap locally so that she could share in this goodness? Would certainly beat simply trying to replace the ps2.

I would have considered attempting to repair the console; however, considering how finding parts for Sony consoles and handhelds is orders of magnitude more difficult than their competitors, i just don't think it's worth it at this point to replace its dvd drive.

 

[Ryccardo]

PS2 lasers are either very easy or near impossible to find depending on what exact model you're looking for (and while just replacing it isn't hard, getting optimal performance and longevity out of the replacement isn't)

Network adapters should be easy to find in the USA (I imported a model with 56k modem - of which I think no fakes exist - for less than the ethernet-only European one - shipping included!)

 

[codezer0]

Okay, so I think I got up to where I was able to copy OPL to the HDD that I am testing with. However, the frustrating thing is that I can't seem to find any actual, working download links for the HDDOSD. I did find a git page for the project, but it doesn't have any links for a download/elf/anything.

Amusingly, I did find an HDLoader 0.8c elf file though... tempted to use that in the meantime.

 

[Snomannen_kalle]

I have a couple of IDE hard drives on hand... a travelstar 160gig that I was using for all this time with HDLoader... but also had this WD 250GB drive.

Well, trying to take off the shielding to space out the connectors for the WD seems to be causing me a problem in that now it just freezes when it should be loading freeHDboot, or freemcboot for that matter.

Okay, now I got the adapter back together... used a usb hdd dock to format the deskstar drive, put it back in the PS2, run uLaunchELF to install fhdb on it, it confirms install went correctly, but when it should be booting... it just freezes. What am I doing wrong?

Did you get it to work, or does it still freeze? I had the same issue as you did (i.e. my PS2 froze when booting to OSDSYS with FHDB installed), but that didn't happen on some of the older FMCB installers (I tried specifically v1.964 and v1.94, both of which worked). However, now it boots to black screen, but I guess it is progress either way.

As for HDDOSD: It seems you can install it with a hacked version of the Sony Utility Disc (tutorial in french here), which is available if you google SUDC3 (as in Sony Utility Disc Compilation 3. Cannot link to it, as it is copyrighted material). I haven't tried it myself yet, as you need to burn it to a disc and run it on your PS2 (it doesn't boot from OPL, apparently), and I don't have any burnable media lying around. Maybe this information is useful to you