An odd sort of problem

[Nyahguy]

Alright... I have Agent Under Fire (acquired at gamestop for 3.99). I made the disc following the instructions set for FMCB to the T. I go through I swap out the game I load up the second level. Black screen. I wait for a while. Nothing. Wait a little longer and the machine goes quiet.

I remove the disc cover and try it again so I can watch (and listen better). Same thing. This time I notice that the laser is dancing around like a mad hatter. Up, pause, small hop down x 8 or so, buzz, back up to the top. And when it goes quiet, I can see that the DVD+R stopped spinning. No error screen, nothing.

Magically... I got it to boot ONCE but my flash drive was (probably) corrupted and it didn't read ANYTHING (it was just a bunch of symbols and what not). I have gotten nothing since then.

WHAT I'VE TRIED: Standard directions using Slide Card, Standard directions with cover off,Memento Patched Iso with slide card, Memento Patched Iso with cover off, ESR Patched Iso with slide card. NOTHING FREAKIN' WORKS.

THOUGHTS?
[EDIT: I have made six copies of the disc, three patched and three unpatched and they all get the same treatment. I also forgot to mention that the disc speed itself (other than just slowing down) is really inconsistent. It'll go from 1X speed to what looks like 2X speed and then slow back down really quickly.]

[spiderman]

Have you tried DVD-R ? I've seen some ps2s that wouldn't read DVD+R.
And I don't think you should be patching iso's yet. That's for using ESR after you have FMCB running.

[dlanor]

Like spiderman said, the ESR patching is intended for use with ESR when you have FMCB fully installed, not for the initial efforts of trying to do the install from scratch. And the same also applies to the Memento patch (basically the same kind of patch), though the fact that you have a Memor32 MC (as required to use Memento) also means that you are wasting your time on an overcomplex method. (And for the better method you should use ESR/Memento-patched discs.)

Using Memento you should be able to boot Memento-patched homebrew discs of all kinds, including one for uLaunchELF. And with uLE running you should be able to use its FileBrowser to inspect the contents of your USB flash drive and thence launch the FMCB installer of the noobie package (if the contents looked normal).

This whole issue of trying to use "007 Agent under fire" like a SwapMagic boot disc, for swapping with blocked sensors etc, is a total waste of time for someone that already has a working semi-soft mod like Memento using the Memor32.

Don't get me wrong now. You should still do an FMCB install as Memento is crap compared to FMCB. (I have a Memor32 too, so I've tried both.) But you should not do it using a Swap-Disc method, since there is no need for it. Trying to do so is just wasted time and effort.

Edit:
Come to think of it, you never stated clearly that you do have a Memor32 card. But that is the only hardware in the known universe that can use Memento, so your post did kind of imply it. If you don't have it, then most of the above parts of my post are irrelevant to you, but the following is not, as this following part assumes that you do not have any Memor32.

The mere fact that you tried to Memento-patch and ESR-patch the discs shows that you have no clue to what you're really doing here, and this implies a very large likelihood that you have not bothered to block the physical disc sensors of your CDVD drive, as required for the kind of swapping needed with the "007 Agent under fire" method. So read up on the sensor blocking and make sure you have that right before proceeding, this time without any ESR or Memento patches.

Best regards: dlanor