Disc-less boot with mod, exploit & hdd?

I've spent the morning reading FAQs, tutorials, and searching through posts here, on exploitstation and ausdigital. I just have a couple of questions, as there's a lot to take in.

I have either a Ripper 2 Gold or ***3 modded v7 (some confusion from the guys that did the mod. anyway of me finding out which i've got, btw? :\ ), using the ownzer free hdloader:

Using an independence exploit CD I could boot HDloader from memory card using a ps1 trigger disc (after jumping through some hoops to get the ELF from the ownzer disc).

But is disc-less booting possible with either ***3 or Ripper 2 Gold? I saw posts from people booting from memory card running HDL from HDD, but I suspect they have nicer mods than me. It'd be nice to know that if my ps2 laser dies completely i have options.

Hold down /\ during boot, if you have a ***3 your boot.elf should load.

I'm not sure if the Ripper has a Dev1 mode though.

Hmmn, holding down /\ during boot takes me to the memory card browser. I guess it's a Ripper 2 Gold then, not ***3. Thanks for your swift reply. And Dev1 mode is what I'd need on the Ripper 2 Gold to be able to boot disc-less I take it ...

Yep, DEV1 will load BOOT.ELF from the B*DADATA-SYSTEM save on your memory card, just like the PS1 exploit.

Hmmn. DEV1 the same as DEV?

"ripper2 has 5 Boot Modes:
PS2, PSX, DVD Video, Dev and Sleep/Stealth Modes.

- For PS2 Games, use PS2 Mode.
- For PSX Games, use PSX Mode.
- For DVD Videos, use DVD Video Mode.
- To boot applications off the Playstation 2 Memory Card,
use Dev Mode."

It looks hopeful to me. There's no applications on my memory card atm, as I wasn't sure which mod I had (all the documentation I have is for ***3), so pressing /\ would do diddly, I imagine. Apologies for being lame. I'm really reading as fast as I can.

Hmmn. What to read now? :) Thanks for your help.

Yep Dev should be the same :)

Now just follow a memory card exploit tutorial but ignore everything about title.db :)

Excellent. Thanks for the tip. Somewhat bizarrely I seem to be able to install both Ripper 2 Nav and ***3 Explorer and they both seem to work. Heh. So still not sure which chip I've got. But hey. If it works, who cares?

hmmn. ignoring everything about title.db didn't realy work - followed Exploit Tutorial for the Total N00B! v1.3 leaving out title.db from the files added to CDGenPS2. Put CD in PS2 and it complainded that it couldn't find title.db. But if I put title.db on there it'll look for a ps1 disc rather than just boot from mc?

Well the title.db is only to make the MC exploit work, it won't hurt to put it there if you really need to :P