Swap Magic ELF, no disc swap?

[pio_masaki]

Ok I got a friend with a slim looking to play imports, I thought I would run some tests on my fatty, and put my swap magic elf on the MC, thinking I would bypass the first (swap magic) disc, run the elf directly with uLE, then just put in the import and boot.

It fails. It tells me the disc isn't a valid PS2 disc, but it's my original initial d dvd. It boots using the disc, just not by the elf alone, any ideas on how to get this to work, or any other program that may boot a game by running it's elf from MC, or MASS, just not by boot disc?

I would just give him my swap magic disc as I don't even need it anymore, but he doesn't want to swap discs at all, wear and tear and all that other stuff (which didn't bother my fat, but I have a flip top lid on it).

Tried cogswap, either I don't know how to use it properly, or it isn't working for this method either.

Edit: forgot to mention, this is on USA NTSC machines, game tested was Japanese NTSC.

Edit 2: After some more googling it seems a disc is required, so swapping is required, however the postings I read this from pre dates FMCB, so kinda old, has anyone figure out a way to do it without swapping discs, or is it still a mechanical issue with the PS2 disc reading itself?

Edit 3: Sigh, may as well delete this lol I told him to either patch for ESR or run open ps2 loader, neither of which he seemed fond of.

[dlanor]

Ok I got a friend with a slim looking to play imports, I thought I would run some tests on my fatty, and put my swap magic elf on the MC, thinking I would bypass the first (swap magic) disc, run the elf directly with uLE, then just put in the import and boot.

It fails. It tells me the disc isn't a valid PS2 disc, but it's my original initial d dvd. It boots using the disc, just not by the elf alone, any ideas on how to get this to work, or any other program that may boot a game by running it's elf from MC, or MASS, just not by boot disc?

Successful running of a backup with SwapMagic requires not only the SwapMagic program to run, but more importantly it requires that the CDVD driver of the PS2 reads in and caches a TOC that is 'larger' than the one for the games to be swapped in. So when using a separated SwapMagic elf file you must have a 'large-TOC' original game disc present in the CDVD drive before you swap it out for a backup of whatever game you really wanted to use.

Edit 3: Sigh, may as well delete this lol I told him to either patch for ESR or run open ps2 loader, neither of which he seemed fond of.

Then he hasn't yet realized how these methods work.

The only drawback of ESR is that already burned backups without the ESR patch will not work with it. Apart from that ESR is more convenient to use than SwapMagic, since there is never any need to manipulate more than one disc. That ESR game backup can remain unchanged in the drive until such time as you want to play another such backup disc.

Open PS2 Loader is even more convenient to use, as you simply choose between the installed games in a menu, without any need to handle physical discs of any kind. And the new improved driver routines allow most games to run without significant stutters, which were a problem in the past. And the chore of installing games, either on a USB drive or on your PC (for SMB method) is negligible compared to the chores of burning and forever handling physical backup discs. These installation chores are a one time thing (per game), and thereafter you just handle menu entries instead of physical discs.

Best regards: dlanor

[pio_masaki]

I explained how this stuff works (the ESR and openps2loader) and he's starting to understand the pros of this vs swapmagic, and he'll probably just go with ESR. His main things were No hardware modding, even just a sensor (slim), no swapping of discs. Anything else he seems to understand is just something you gotta do.

Thanks for the info dlanor, I'll pass this along (the swapmagic TOC thing I didn't know about). The lower half of your post are things I already told him, you just put it in a much better way, guess now he thought about it and figures its not so bad.