PS1/2 Odd issue with OPL Nightly and HDD

[razinx]

I had been running OPL 0.9.3 for awhile now, with a gamestar SATA adapter, with no issues. I opted to try one of the nightly builds recently and on first attempt it would take a couple minutes of loading/searching for the drive, only to come back with 221: HardDisk not formatted.

I still have 0.9.3 available, so I tested that again to be sure and everything is good.

Shutdown the PS2 for a few days, came back tried again with the nightly that was still sitting on my USB stick, and it worked. Awesome, games run, UI looks a little slicker, thought I was good to go....nope. After a few uses, back to error 221. Again, 0.9.3 works, no issues.

Tried another nightly (now 1024 all) and same issue, searches for drive, 221.

I have tried loading them from USB and MC. No go.

While I can live with 0.9.3, the nightlies do look a lot nicer and would like to stick with them, if I can figure what the heck is going on...

Any ideas??
TIA

 

[Dungeonseeker]

Don't know what causes this issue but I know the workaround...

Essentially OPL isn't initialising your HDD before it tries to access it, it's not the only thing that does it either, Free McBoot Configurator does the exact same thing.

To workaround it just run something that initialises your HDD, either OPL 0.93 or ULaunchELF (with ULE make sure you see the Initialising HDD Module message, you might have to click on HDD:0 in the file browser). You should hear the HDD spin up as its initialised, once the drive is spinning OPL 0.94 Beta and Free MCBoot Configuratior will work properly.

The way I do it is very easy, first I got ULE 0.44 HDD Edition, renamed it to boot.elf and replaced the boot.elf in my MCs boot folder then when I power my PS2 on I just hold R1 down and it auto boots ULE, as I'm running the HDD edition of ULE drive initialising happens during the app launching so I can then just quit ULE back to browser and run OPL 0.94. The only thing I had to do was setup a quit to browser button in ULE as by default it doesn't come with one assigned.

 

[Chickenhunterx]

Try installing fhdb it fixed my problems with opl and initializing the hard drive

 

[Dungeonseeker]

So I've been looking into this some more as it annoys me too, turns out its a known issue with OPL 0.94 which has been reported multiple times to the devs. Its an unofficial adapter thing (1st party Sony IDE adapters are unaffected), the devs know exactly what it causing this issue however they might not actually fix it.

Turns out the bug was introduced when they streamlined some code to improve OPL and they've basically said they're not sure they want to undo these changes and undo their improvements for the sake of unofficial adapters.

http://www.ps2-home.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=3450
Here's the thread reporting the issue

http://psx-scene.com/forums/f19/des...n-gamestar-compatible-network-adaptor-157321/
Here's the thread where the devs are asking if its worth fixing or not.

 

[Chickenhunterx]

I'm also using the game star adapter I had the same issues until I tightened the screws in the back I dont know what that does but for whatever reason ightening them up allowed my ps2 to to see the had in opl and then installing fhdb cleared up all my other issues also go to your fmcb configuration and disable the skip initialize hdd option

 

[relminator]

Have you tried FHDB? No MMC needed.