Does anyone know how hdloader actually works?

I was just curious if anyone knows how hdloader works. I would imagine it loads the game's elf executable from the hdd and somehow redirects file input to the hdd or something. Anyway I was just wondering if anyone could clear it up for me. Thanks in advance!

Games normally do not come in "elf"s.. they are different executable files. What HDL does is emulate the partition as the CD drive.. so the Game still makes the same calls, but HDL sits there and monitors calls made to the CDROM and redirects them to the emulated CDROM (which is a partition on the HD).

At least that's how I understand it.

I am pretty sure that the games are elf executables. I opened up the SLUS_... file on some of my games (ssx3 for example) in a hex editor. It seems to be an elf executable from what I can see (the first 4 characters in the file are .ELF).

someone once told me a SLUS is just a padded elf.

They are basically one in the same, of course one is official and doesnt have the .elf extension.

HDLoader is basically like daemon tools for the ps2, along with automatic execution of a certain file. (That being the slus)