I just wanted to share the fun i had with HD Advance 2.1 (PAL). I bought it because at the time i had no idea about its moral and technical shortcomings. After having my share of problems with it (e.g. Gran Turismo 3 won't run) and surfing for solutions, i stumbled over "The Exploit" and so i wanted to try it but that was not easy working with HD Advance:

  • The PS2 Independence Installer failed to load CDVD.IRX
  • ExecFTPs hung initializing some module
  • Even HDL_dump Server displayed only a black screen

So there seems to be something quite wrong with that version of HD Advance, but luckily i found something in zabolyx's Noob Image that worked: the FileBrowser in LaunchELF.

To summarize:
  1. Create a new TITLE.DB with Titleman
  2. Gather the files for the image (SYSTEM.CNF,LaunchELF) and the files that should be placed on the memory card (TITLE.DB, some launcher named BOOT.ELF and its configuration, HD Loader, ...) and some big file to enlarge the image (should be about 100MB)
  3. Create a .bin-image of them using CDGenPS2
  4. Transfer the image with WinHIIP to the PS2-hard disk
  5. Start the PS2 with HD Advance and run the newly transferred image
  6. In LaunchELF press select and map MISC/FileBrowser to some button, accept the changes and switch to the FileBrowser
  7. Browse to the cdfs:/ and mark the files that should be placed on the memory card and select copy from the menu. Now browse to the B*DATA-SYSTEM directory on mc0:/ and paste the files through the menu.

That's it!

In the long run it would have been much simpler (and even cheaper) if i had bought something like Action Replay Max instead, but that was not obvious at the beginning. I hope at least someone else can benefit from my struggles ...