That might actually be helpful Qtis. I've read of the questionable game compatability with usb hard drives, and that is what spawned the question I had. I want the best compatability that I can get if I incorporate this into the project I'm building. Hopefully it will work. I do have a phat ps2, but I am trying to make something portable so the shear size of the power supply board and main board in that thing are huge, kind of impeding it from being as small as possible. Reason for me wanting to use my slim. Thanks
I'm using OPL + USB HDD via USB fine without an external power supply (only even used 1 of the 2 ports on my slim).
I've never had a game I wasn't able to play via OPL 1.8 yet.
Problems arise with it when the drive or the file is fragmented so make sure to defrag( I used tuneup ) your HDD when problems occur. For USB flash drives, I just reformat and recopy since it's faster.
You can use ISOs to play in OPL. In fact I would suggest it with games < 4gb in size. For larger games, use usb extreme etc.
Be sure that the format of your USB flash or HDD is FAT32.
Using VMC gives you almost unlimited saves albeit a little slower save time.
Gamplaywise, some (I mean most) of the movies stutter but not really that big a problem for me. Load times is also slower but not by much.
Some I finished using OPL:
FFXII -> Stutter on the movies but load times are as fast as DVD
Tales of the abyss -> Opening movie stutters but all other movies play full speed. Never use VMC!
WIld Arms 5 -> Great!
Ar Tonelico -> OPL is the only way I was able to play this game as it somehow did not like my 8mb MC so I used VMC for saves.
Tekken -> My laser is slower reading my DVD than OPL via USB.
BTW, you could also use codebreaker with OPL.