HD Combo for PS2 Slim ~ SwapMagic to load ELF HDLoader?

[diehllane]

The only place I really ever deal with is www.foundmy.com
They're great. Never had any hassles with them. I highly recommend them.

[Mozgus]

The only place I really ever deal with is www.foundmy.com
They're great. Never had any hassles with them. I highly recommend them.

Really?

[Flak Beard]

The only place I really ever deal with is www.foundmy.com
They're great. Never had any hassles with them. I highly recommend them.

Damn, I was going to go here to get my Swap Magic, but after reading those ratings I'm not so sure. Mozgus, where did you order yours from?

[diehllane]

I ordered 2 Qoob Pros from them back in 2006 and got both very fast without a problem.

The only other site I have ordered from that I can remember is ModChipCentral( http://www.modchipcentral.com/store/hom ... c510b2799f ) where I got my Wii's D2CKey.

[Mozgus]

The only place I really ever deal with is www.foundmy.com
They're great. Never had any hassles with them. I highly recommend them.

Damn, I was going to go here to get my Swap Magic, but after reading those ratings I'm not so sure. Mozgus, where did you order yours from?

I already said in this thread; I bought mine from someone on this forum.

[vlame]

iirc slim ps2's have problems/can't connect to HDDs/network adaptors, how are you going to do this? link? tutorial?

[Mozgus]

iirc slim ps2's have problems/can't connect to HDDs/network adaptors, how are you going to do this? link? tutorial?

What do you think the HD Combo does? It's really just a fancy shell to accommodate the hard drive, and it has ribbon cables that are custom shaped to be soldered perfectly onto the exact pins on the motherboard of v12 and v13. Sony basically removed the hard drive bay, without really removing the traces; just shifting them around a little. v14 and beyond had this "loose end" taken care of.

It also provides a cord that will power the system and the hdd in one, and it has fans to keep the hdd cool.

[executioner]

I've been using a v12 SCPH-70012 slim PS2 with Swap Magic 3.8 discs. These discs can load ELF files from USB thumb drives. ELF files are like EXE files for PS2.

I'm considering buying this to play games off the HDD:

http://www.hdcombo.com/cgi-bin/hdcombo/ ... page=specs

Now all the info I've found on it say you need a mod chip in order to load the software disc (which you can burn) or to load the software off your memory card, by using known exploits to get it there in the first place I guess. I can't actually find the supposed "HD-OS", but I've seen posts showing that people use HD Combo with the popular HDLoader software.

Now I've confirmed that the final version of HDLoader boots off my thumb drive with the swap magic discs. Of course it says there's no hard drive attached, which is true. The issue is I can't find anyone who has ever used SwapMagic to boot HDLoader for their HD Combo unit. Chances seem likely that it would work fine, but I have this worry about mod chips still being required in some way, else the hard drives are never truly accessible. I remember hearing something about dev1 and dev2 modes or something. It's been a long time.

So will this work, or not?

Have you thought about using a usb case to connect the hard drive using your swap magic to load HDAdvance or whatever. Maybe you have one lying around or it could be a cheaper alternative for you. Just that loading times are slower and compatibility is not as great in usb. I tested that on a friend slim just to see if it would work, but a fat ps2 with the network adapter is what I have.

[Mozgus]

Have you thought about using a usb case to connect the hard drive using your swap magic to load HDAdvance or whatever. Maybe you have one lying around or it could be a cheaper alternative for you. Just that loading times are slower and compatibility is not as great in usb. I tested that on a friend slim just to see if it would work, but a fat ps2 with the network adapter is what I have.

Don't even speak about the USB HDD method. When you do, some poor newbie goes out and buys a USB enclosure just to realize it's worthless to him. The USB method is incompatible with most games, and when it actually does work, you still suffer from triple load times and massive stutters, even in FMVs. There's no reason anyone should use it.

[diehllane]

I agree with Mozgus. I got USB Advance (because I got the HD Xtreme combination of HD Advance and USB Advance). I tried it out to see how many games i had that would work with it. Out of the 15 games I tried, 3 worked, but all of them worked with HD Advance.