How do I use ARmax with HDD games

[markjabber]

I have a HDD fitted with my games on but how do I use my armax cheat codes with these games?

thanks in advance.

[cocklea]

Since there are so many questions regarding this, I decide to make this step by step guide and I hope the Mod can sticky this so that no more question from lazy newbs to do a seacrh in the future because I hate repeating.

These are the games that I've tried and succeded to use ARMax Evo cheats with my games in the hdd.

1. PoP:WW
2. The Punisher
3. DMC3 (NTSC J/UC)
4. Death By Degress
5. GTA:SA
6. Project Snowblind
7. Tekken 5
8. MGS3
9.Altered Beast (PAL)
10. Resident Evil 4 (PAL)

I'll try to explain how I did it.This method I use after reading chevyuk's guide.
I only followed some of his method as I failed to use 100% of his instructions.

You'll need.

1. ISOBuster (to extract the game and armax files into your PC and also
to generate file list.)
2. CDGenPS2 ver 3.
3. Hex Editor (any hex editor will do,I'm using UltraEdit32).
3. WinHIIP ver1.7.3.

Don't bother PM me asking where to find these apps. DO A SEARCH. GOOGLE is your best friend.

Step 1.
Put your game disc into your PC's DVDRom drive and run ISOBuster then extract all files into one directory e.g C:\MGS3.
This will take a while. After all the game files have been extracted, create a directory list file for the game (right click on the small icon select Directory tree and file information then select List tree-info (in text file) then select LBA,relative path), put it in the same directory as the game files.The filename will be Filelist.txt. You can close ISOBuster.

Step 2.
Extract ARMax / Evo files same like Step 1. You can omit the file DUMMY.ZIP,BIG.DAT and BIG2.DAT if you want, as these files are only dummy files. You don't need to create the directory file list for ARMax.

Step 3.
Go to your game directory and rename the file SYSTEM.CNF to SYSTE1.CNF. Edit your game directory file list (i.e the Filelist.txt) and change the SYSTEM.CNF entry to SYSTE1.CNF and save the file.

Step 4.
Go to your ARMax directory where you've extracted all the files. Open the SLUS_200.90 file with your hex editor. Try to search the SYSTEM.CNF entry.There will be three entries of this. Change it to SYSTE1.CNF (you have to do it 3 times). Make sure to save it. Now you have an edited SLUS_200.90 file (this file is the executable file for ARMax/Evo).

Step 5.
Open up CDGenPS2 and select Import Tree File,ISOBuster from the Advanced menu. Select the game file list (i.e Filelist.txt) from the game folder. Choose Use LBA (the first option). It will put all the game files accordingly to the original LBA.
Then Open up Windows Explorer and go to your ARMax directory.Select all the files and drag into CDGenPS2. Now all your game files and ARMax files are ready. Click the IMG icon to create an image file. Give it a name. The image file can be in ISO or Bin format. Normally I use BIN/CUE.The process of rebuilding the image will take sometime, so be patient.

Step 6.
After the new image file has been created open up WinHIIP (make sure your PS2 HDD is already in your PC). Select your PS2 hdd. Choose Add Image(s) and click on your newly created game image. Make sure to put SLUS_200.90 as the boot file and DVD not CD in the option and click on Start button. After the new image game file has been transferred, put your PS2 Hdd back into your PS2 and boot up your PS2 using the HDL/HDA disc. ARMAX will load. Choose the cheat code for that game and press START to launch the game.

Credit goes to tot31 from lowyat.net for the tutorial.

[Jackal5]

Is the process the same for code breaker?

[cocklea]

i tried it with ARMAX and it works. Not sure bout codebreaker tho since i dont use it much. u can give it a try, but i have a feeling that it will not work since hexes for both ARMAX and CB is different.

[blyth]

codebreaker is easy yoiu can just load the codebreaker disk select your cheats and I have heard it work 2 ways:

1) after auto eject put your HDL disk or ps1 boot disk (for mem card exploit) and it will go to browser showing disk & mem card select disk load your game and your good.

2) after auto eject put in original ps2 game and when screen goes black hit eject and put in your HDL disk or boot disk

and by the way does anybody know where youcan get codebreakedr in canada b/c all I have ever seen in AR

[Jackal5]

Ok. I'm giving this a try for Monster Hunter G (JPN). But there are a few things that aren't happening here. I have all of the need programs listerd above. I was following the original FAQ for this and I was taking a look at this one at the same time. Here's my progress for each step.

Step 1.
I placed the game disc into the drive but IsoBuster only shows a single image (a disc). Nothing more. (DVD+R>Session 1> Track 1)

So I used the other method and right clicked the drive and pulled the files to cdgen.

There is no options when I right click on the image in Iso to see any kind of directories or trees. I can see the LBA (-150)

Step 2.
No problems.

Step 3.
I changed the system.cnf file names for ARMax in it's directory. I followed the cdgen method to do the same for the game files system.cnf.

Step 4.
I used the editor to change the system.cnfs ( I actually found 4 of them).

Step 5.
Can't be done because IsoBuster wasn't able to make a file as mentioned on this site.

So now I have the IsoBuster still open and the cdgen. I guess I need to change the LBA numbers before I can complete this. Any ideas?

[Jackal5]

There is a right click option to extract in IsoBuster. Should I try it?

[durtydawg]

CDgen keeps crashing on me not responding. I am using the latest tried previous versions as well but everytime I go make my image same thing any ideas?

[Deedlythcetilye]

The ARMax crashes after a random time ( while loading or while selecting- whatsever). Is it because of the deleted dummy files or do I have to activate a special mode? I dont know where is teh problem

[kev_smg]

CDgen keeps crashing on me not responding. I am using the latest tried previous versions as well but everytime I go make my image same thing any ideas?

Its not crashing, though it looks it.

Its just creating the image. It takes a while. When your HDD activity light turns off, you'll know its done (unless your doing something else on your PC).