Free McBoot HDD support? Plus finicky USB drive.

[phoenixclaws]

I'm sure it's mentioned somewhere on the forums but I've noticed that only the MC cards and USB drives are supported to setup an ELF boot point. Are there plans to support the HDD to boot ELFs off too?

Also, My old USB drive does not play nice with the PS2. If it's already plugged into the PS2 it won't be detected. It's only when it has been unplugged and replugged in does it become detected. Or I can wait until the PS2 is fully up and then plug in my USB drive. Though it seems that some ELFs don't like booting off of my USB drive. My USB drive is an old 1 gb JOGR pictured in the link.

I may have to get one of those newer Sandisk drives for better compatibility. Although my JOGR is prefect for reading codes off of in Codebreaker :P.

[dlanor]

I'm sure it's mentioned somewhere on the forums but I've noticed that only the MC cards and USB drives are supported to setup an ELF boot point. Are there plans to support the HDD to boot ELFs off too?

No, because the available boot KELFs (a very special file type) are either too large to be suitable for general FMCB use (appx 1.4 MB => extremely slow boot and extreme waste of MC space) or too small (appx 75KB) to allow a payload including all the extra device and filesystem drivers needed for HDD access.

Also, My old USB drive does not play nice with the PS2. If it's already plugged into the PS2 it won't be detected. It's only when it has been unplugged and replugged in does it become detected. Or I can wait until the PS2 is fully up and then plug in my USB drive. Though it seems that some ELFs don't like booting off of my USB drive. My USB drive is an old 1 gb JOGR pictured in the link.

This compatibility might vary with different USBD and USBHDFSD drivers, which have very recently received some significant upgrades. But I don't know if any new release packages have taken advantage of those driver improvements yet.

I may have to get one of those newer Sandisk drives for better compatibility.

SanDisk drives do have a very good reputation for PS2 use. I have three myself (2GB, 8GB, 16GB) and they all work perfectly, even with the old PS2 homebrew drivers.

Best regards: dlanor

[TnA]

I'm sure it's mentioned somewhere on the forums but I've noticed that only the MC cards and USB drives are supported to setup an ELF boot point.

That is right.

Are there plans to support the HDD to boot ELFs off too?

We (Community) keep it in mind, but I think it´ll last some time till we have it (and probably also not in the next version... Maybe 2.0? ), so stick with uLE yet.

No, because the available boot KELFs (a very special file type) are either too large to be suitable for general FMCB use (appx 1.4 MB => extremely slow boot and extreme waste of MC space) or too small (appx 75KB) to allow a payload including all the extra device and filesystem drivers needed for HDD access.

(<-- I just quote ya, to give some detail to the TS. )

Well,... There are a few between those (some with 300KB), but the bad thing about it is that we do not have any bigger one than the 75KB-DVDPLx´s, where all DVDELF´s have the same size for all MG-Regions.

Another thing is, that we can´t get rid of the pre-encrypted KELFs to create our OSD-Upgrade.
We can´t vary the file-size.
Maybe the time will come.

Back to HD-Support.
I think it is possible to integrate HD-Support, but:
-it will need external HD-Drivers, to match the 75KB-DVDELF/DVDPLx (<-- *1)
-add support for an external OSDMOD.ELF and rip the embedded OSD-Hack to a few standard-features.
-it will need an option, to turn the HD-Support on/off.
Else it will have the HD turned on ever (because of the current structure where FMCB checks if an ELF is present, it must turn on the HD before it even executes the hacked OSD).


(*1: pre-encrypted dvdplayer, every PS2 has in its ROM... It differs in size from region and version. The 75KB-DVDPLxs are those pre-encrypted DVD-Player-Files from Slimline-PS2s.)