FMCB & Chinese 64MB card problem (boots only after reset)

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04-22-2009, 09:47 AM
lall

FMCB & Chinese 64MB card problem (boots only after reset)

Hi,

Can anybody say why is my ps2 always booting at first time to original menu and then if i hit reset then 'll get fmcb menu?

I'm guessing, that the mem. card is too big, and it takes longer time to recognize the card (or boot from it) than it takes to boot to original soft.

Can I fix it? Or is it unsolvable hardware comparability problem?

Regards,
Martin
04-22-2009, 10:24 AM
dlanor

Quote:

Originally Posted by lall

Hi,

Can anybody say why is my ps2 always booting at first time to original menu and then if i hit reset then 'll get fmcb menu?

I'm guessing, that the mem. card is too big, and it takes longer time to recognize the card (or boot from it) than it takes to boot to original soft.

Can I fix it? Or is it unsolvable hardware comparability problem?

If these are the same kind of chinese 64MB cards that I have tried, then there is nothing to do, and the cards will never work reliably, with or without FMCB.

I bought four such cards (fortunately very cheap), which have a plastic case clearly intended to imitate the original Sony MC almost identically, except that the mouldings were not perfect which resulted in slightly wider and thicker dimensions. (less than 1mm diff) The most obvious difference from a Sony MC (apart from the text stating 64 MB size) is that there are no Sony or PS2 logos on these cards.

These cards can sometimes seem to run well for a period of time (the most I got was around 20 hours once), but eventually they will always fail, with even the original Sony browser failing to detect the card. And frequently they also fail directly at power-on.

And like I said above, this has nothing to do with whether or not FMCB is stored on the card. It is just that when you are trying to boot FMCB, which is entirely dependent on full integrity of the memory card, then any tiny glitches that might pass unnoticed normally will result in an FMCB boot failure, since even a single byte glitch will cause the bios checks of the 'signed' KELF file to fail.

Note also that this has nothing to do with the memory card storage size as such, though a larger size always causes MC operations to be slower. But 64 MB cards of other kinds, such as the Datel MaxMemory type, work fine without any of the weird failures that plague the chinese 64MB cards I tried.

Best regards: dlanor
04-23-2009, 02:54 AM
lall

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlanor

If these are the same kind of chinese 64MB cards that I have tried, then there is nothing to do, and the cards will never work reliably, with or without FMCB.

I bought four such cards (fortunately very cheap), which have a plastic case clearly intended to imitate the original Sony MC almost identically, except that the mouldings were not perfect which resulted in slightly wider and thicker dimensions. (less than 1mm diff) The most obvious difference from a Sony MC (apart from the text stating 64 MB size) is that there are no Sony or PS2 logos on these cards.

These cards can sometimes seem to run well for a period of time (the most I got was around 20 hours once), but eventually they will always fail, with even the original Sony browser failing to detect the card. And frequently they also fail directly at power-on.

And like I said above, this has nothing to do with whether or not FMCB is stored on the card. It is just that when you are trying to boot FMCB, which is entirely dependent on full integrity of the memory card, then any tiny glitches that might pass unnoticed normally will result in an FMCB boot failure, since even a single byte glitch will cause the bios checks of the 'signed' KELF file to fail.

Note also that this has nothing to do with the memory card storage size as such, though a larger size always causes MC operations to be slower. But 64 MB cards of other kinds, such as the Datel MaxMemory type, work fine without any of the weird failures that plague the chinese 64MB cards I tried.

Best regards: dlanor

Thanks for reply!

The card itself is very reliable, it hasn't never failed or done anything that indicates it's malfunctioning.
But - i'm used with the reset, so it'll do fine for me. It's just little annoying.

Thanks again,

Martin
05-19-2009, 01:50 PM
urmele

Has somebody tried the 128MB Memory Cards yet?
Do they have the same problems?

I found some in Ebay for about 10 Euros.
They say, that they are much faster in loading and writing time than
the old 64MB cards.

I wonder if i also can use them with FMCB:rolleyes:
05-20-2009, 09:42 AM
Efros

I have a 128MB card I got from ***********, it boots FMCB fine, although I did replace the case with one from an old 2MB card I had, purely because the fit was so tight with the PS2 that I would get intermittent connections. Only thing I have noticed is that some games, Burnout Revenge, take a long time to access and write to the card to the point where music will stutter.
05-20-2009, 10:26 AM
urmele

Quote:

Originally Posted by Efros

I have a 128MB card I got from ***********, it boots FMCB fine, although I did replace the case with one from an old 2MB card I had, purely because the fit was so tight with the PS2 that I would get intermittent connections. Only thing I have noticed is that some games, Burnout Revenge, take a long time to access and write to the card to the point where music will stutter.

Thanks for the info :ups:

I will buy one next week.