Experiences of a Mac User NooB

[JohnnyRico]

Hi guys, thought I'd sound off my experiences here in the hope that it might help others and maybe someone might point out where I am going wrong.
I've just gotten a Silver PS2 that came with a 40Gb Maxtor drive and HD Loader running as an MC Exploit. I had been busy aquiring backup copies of a few games in anticipation of receiving my new toy. I know you need either a modded PS2 or a magic swap disk to play backup games but I had read that if you can get them onto the hard disk then they will play.
This was the start of my problem. I'm using a ibook (thats an Apple Macintosh for those that don't know) as such all these great little apps you all talk about don't run on the Mac OS.
I installed Virtual PC 7 on my ibook, then installed Windows XP. The first application I tried was called FAPLink. This app allows you to connect your PC directly to the PS2 via ethernet cable. I installed FAPLink, read the info and changed my ibooks network settings to the same i.p range as the default setting for the PS2. Whenever I clicked on the connect button I could see the activity light on the PS2 network adapter flashing so I could tell the cable was working , it would not mount the PS2 drive though.
Re-reading and finally grasping some of the points in the FAP info file, I realised in order for it to work I had to have an ELF program installed first on my memory card called "fap_srv.elf" At this point I had learnt that ELF's are infact small PS2 applications much in the same way of .exe files on a PC. Asmy PS2 is unmodded and I don't have swap magic disks I had no way of getting this new ELF on my memory card like the HD Loader ELF that is already there. The other alternative I read about was connecting the PS2 hard drive directly to PC and using another application that would allow your PC to see the PS2 partition. As my Mac is a laptop I couldn't fit in the PS2 drive. As it happens I have another old G3 Mac that I have been tinkering with that has a 9Gb scuzzi, a 4Gb IDE and a new 160Gb Maxtor drive. I decided the 160Gb Maxtor would be better than the 40Gb one in my PS2 and I swapped them. I put the 160GB Maxtor in the PS2 and booted up with HD Loader from the memory card, it formatted my drive in seconds and I successfully ripped a couple of rented games to test it worked.
I then put my original 40Gb PS2 formatted Maxtor in my Mac. Botting my Mac was fine and as expected. The 9 and 4Gb drives were mounted and on checking the system the Mac was 'seeing' the 40GbPS2 formatted Maxtor, although as it has not Mac partition it wasn't mounted. I presume this is what you would expect to happen on a PC?
Now I had the task of installing both Virtual PC and Windows XP on my old G3. Windows ran suprisingly quick considering it was on a 233Mhz G3 Mac that was already running MacOS 9 then the Virtual PC emulator and on top of that Windows XP! Anyway, I installed an app called "winhiip_v1" thinking that success was finally in my sights. Unfortunatly the PS2 drive did not show up. Not knowing why this might be and feeling down but not beaten I had another rethink.
I came up with the foolhardy plan of removing the PS2 cover and the DVD/CD-rom cover, exposing the disk to manually swap the disks this way. I had read that this should be possible. If you have a Silver PS two it's really easy to get into, just 8 screws on the cover. The drive cover is more tricky, only two screws but very small and tight. A presicion screwdriver is a must. But there are also two plastic clips that you must prise open before the case top will come off. I did all this, loaded up HD Loader and clicked on install. I had to put in a real PS2 disk and clip back on the drive case (I learnt that after seeing a disk take a trip to the ceiling!) Now, I had read that you click on install enter the name of the game you want to install but before clicking on continue, you swap the disk with your target back up. But the original disk was still spinning away. Clicking on cancel does stop it spinning but it also stops the install process. Clicking install again it has to read the real PS2 disk first. I was stuck again. Desparation gripped me, recklessly I attempted to clip off the drive cover whilst the original disk was still spinning and swap it with my back up disk and then replace the drive cover with the disk spinning. This does not work. It scratches the PS2 original game and jams up the drive. I admitted defeat and put my brand new Silver PS2 back together. Breathed a sigh of relief as it still read my PS1 boot disk for the HD Loader memory card exploit. The rented PS2 game I was using was not so fortunate. I'm waiting for a call from the video rental place any day now.
As far as I can gather I'm all out of options. Unless I can get a memory card that has HD Loader and FAPLink already installed.But why didn't the winhiip_v1 option work, was it because of it running thru Virtual PC, maybe, but if that is the case having a Memory card with other ELFS on wont help as I would still need a PC from which to connect to.
So, what do I do? Get a mod chip? After the sweaty and traumatic experience thus far with taking apart my PS2, I don't relish the task of soldering 20 wires into it (As you will tell from the numerous typos my sausage fingers are not adept at typing, let alone soldering)
Friendly suggestions would be most welcome ( expecting sooo many buy a PC ones)

[Sir Al]

So, what do I do? Get a mod chip?

Get an external USB enclosure for your hard drive and try USB eXtreme. It'll enable you to connect the hard drive to your computer to transfer games and then to your PS2.

Friendly suggestions would be most welcome ( expecting sooo many buy a PC ones)

Get a PowerBook.

[v1p3r]

Get some paragraphs and I might try to read that