Plenty of Question About uLaunchElf

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Originally Posted by gendouhydeist

First Question
Does uLaunchElf have already integrated the IRX Drivers?? Like usb and hdd

Yes, all drivers normally needed are embedded. Some few of them can also be replaced by external ones specified by the user, but that is optional.

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Second
If drivers are not intergrated yet? how's the address goes?

Address ? What do you mean by address ?
The user is not allowed to specify runtime addresses for anything at all.

If external drivers are to be used, they are only specified by normal filenames and pathnames, but never by absolute CPU addresses.

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I dunno the start, unlike windows the beginning of the letter is C:\Blah\Blah

Huh ?
Sorry, but I have no clear idea what you mean by that.

On the PS2 filepath specifications normally include a name for a device, followed by a colon, and then slash-separated folder names, except for HDD where the first slash-separated name is reserved for a partition name instead.

Thus we can have "mc0:/BEDATA-SYSTEM/BOOT.ELF" consisting only of a device name, a folder name, and a file name, which is normal for memory cards.

But on HDD we can have more complex pathnames, like:
"hdd0:/__common/PSU-backups/FFX (Int)/BISLPS-25088FF090600_FF10 ____ [01] Calm-Arena.psu"
For such a path it is important to realize that "__common" is not just a folder, but a separate partition. This would have a separate drive letter on a PC, a method not implemented on the PS2, so here the very concept of "drive letter" does not exist.

That's a good thing too, as the normal alphabet doesn't have as many letters as I have partitions on my PS2 HDD. (One for each HDL-installed game, plus all system and homebrew partitions.)

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Third
How can i apply skins?

Have you even tried looking for it yourself ? I'ts pretty obvious...

In the main menu, you should always have the 'SELECT' entry defined for reaching the configuration menu. That is where all user changeable settings are made, so press the 'SELECT' button on your PS2 controller to enter this configuration menu.

In the configuration menu you first choose "Screen Settings...", to open that submenu, and in it you then choose "Skin Settings..." which opens yet another submenu containing the settings you need. The "Skin Path:" entry leads to the FileBrowser where you can select a skin file to be displayed in the skin test box of this menu, and if you're happy with your choice you can use the command "Apply new skin" to activate it. After backing out of the submenus you'll also need to use the "OK" command at the top level of configuration menu to ensure that the changes are saved to your CNF file. If you exit with "Cancel" instead, all settings you've made revert to the previous values (a good way to recover after mistakes).

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Fourth
Does uLaunchElf IRX ntegrate automatically in some elf program.

uLaunchELF itself is not an IRX, so on the whole that would be impossible. But the IRX drivers used by one program can always affect the program(s) it launches because of how such things are handled on the PS2.

Already loaded IRX drivers always remain resident when a new program is launched. This does not necessarily mean that they'll work well with this program though. Some drivers need a proper IOP reset, and new reloading in order to function properly (USB mass: drivers for example). Performing such IOP reset is the responsibility of each program launched, but sadly to say some programs neglect it completely. They will then be unable to access such a device (like mass: for example) if that driver was previously used by uLE.

To allow some control of such problems uLE avoids loading extra drivers until they are called for by some real usage (this includes usage for skin too). So in a session where only MC is used for all things (including skins etc), there should not be any driver conflicts with other programs you launch (as the MC driver itself is conflict-free).

You can also intentionally use the limitation of a program without IOP reset to trick it into using a driver supplied by uLE (eg: for HDD), instead of the one it wants to load. This can sometimes be useful with old programs having bad/old drivers embedded.

Best regards: dlanor