Running SNES Station & Games off a HDD
Hey guys I found a really kick ass solution that frees up space on your memory card and allows you to run snes-station off hard drive and also run games off of your hard drive!!!
Here's what you need
- PS2 (hopefully you knew that)
- Hard Drive (doesn't have to be sony HD)
- A way to transfer elf files to your memory card
- Memory card Exploit on your memory card
- MyPS2 Program (Playstation 2 swiss army knife ... hehe) go here to get it -- http://www.exploitstation.com/index.php?pa ge=elfs
- A USB card (This is just for transfering roms unless you use the usb stick to get the ELF files on your memory card)
*Note - you must get the snes station from the link provided below because the one on exploit station does NOT support Hard Drives or USB Drives
- Snes-Station (this is actually a rehashed version but it has Usb and HD support) Go here to get it --
http://freenet-homepage.de/ps2dev/emulators.html - At least 3MB free on your memory card
Let's Start
Step 1 :
Getting the files ready on the memory card.
First you need to download MyPS2 and Snes-Station and install them to your memory card. I did this with ExecFtp and a network hub/switch. If you are going to network then you must either use a network crossover cable or a network Hub/switch/router. If you are going to use the USB Stick then just transfer MyPS2 to the memory card you can just copy the Snes-Station Elf off of the Usb Drive.
Step 2 :
Now Configure your ELF Launcher (Keylauncher / Ulauch / Launcher) program to load up the MyPS2 elf from the memory card. You can also set up Snes-Station as well but you do not need to set this up if you do what I did to save room on the Memory Card.
Step 3 :
Now Boot up the MyPS2 program. Once it loads it will ask you to create a partition on your Hard Disk. Select create a partition and select the desired size of your partition (this will resize the other partitions on your Hard Drive and make room for a new one with the selected size)
*Note I would recommend doing this with a clean formatted Hard drive or a drive that has a lot of free space unless you are going to make a very small partition. Format either using HDLoader/HDAdvance/Or the hard drive format utility.
Step 4 :
Let the MyPS2 application load and once you are at the main screen scroll down to my files and press "X". You should see 3 or 4 directories in the list (depending on if you hooked up your usb drive). They should look something like this :
hdd+MyPS2/ ---- This is the Hard drive
mc0/ ---- This is the memory card
cdrom0/ ---- This is your PS2 CD Drive
usb0/ ---- This is your usb card
**If you see this one do not touch
pf0/ ---- Honestly I don't know what this one is for (I wouldn't reccomend touching it)
--Scroll to hdd+MyPS2 and press "X"
--Now you should only see a ../ and nothing else (besides the options on the left)
-- Now scroll over to the options on the left and Press "X" on create a new folder. It will ask you to name it. Name the folder "ELF" or "Elf Files" so you know that this is where your elf files are.
-- Now you should see the folder you just created (if you don't then you are in then directory and just need to click on the ../ at the top right (this takes you up one directory).
-- Now following the same steps used to create your "Elf" folder create another folder and name it "Roms" (this should be in the main directory, hdd0+MyPS2)
-- You should now see two folders in the hdd0+MyPS2 directory. Ok almost done. Now go back up to where you saw the main 4 directories (The Hard Drive, Memory card, Cd -Rom, and USb) and press "X" on the mc0 Directory (if you are using the USB stick to transfer the Snes-Station locate the file on your USB card **the usb0 directory) . Scroll down to Be-data System (Ba-Data System) and press "X". Now locate the snes-station elf file and highlight and and press "Square". Scroll over to the options menu and press "X" on copy. Now it will ask you to select a destination. Now go into the elf directory that we created earlier. Once you are in the directory go into the menu on the left and press "X" on start. Now you just need to copy the roms to the usb card and follow the same instructions to copy all of your roms to the roms directory on the Hard Drive.
-- Finally go back to the main screen of MyPS2. Select "My Programs" and enter the hdd0+MyPS2 directory and go into the elf folder we created earlier. Now just press "X" on the Snes-Station Elf file and it will load the Snes-Station !!
*Note you can only load an ELF file when you are using the "My Programs" option to browse the directories it will NOT work if you pressed "X" on My Files / My Pictures ect..
When you load Snes-Station you will see a whole bunch of directories. The one we want is all the way at the bottom of the list and is labeled MyPS2. Scroll all the way to the bottom and press "X" on it. Now navigate to the "Roms" Directory and voila there are your games!!!
** Note - if you are going to be using PGen or any other emulators that have Hard Drive Support I would suggest making a roms directory and a sub directory for each system. And if you have alot of games I would suggest 4 folders to alphabetically organize them.
*You can put as many Elf files in the ELF folder as you want so the only Elf files you need on the memory card are the luancher (Ulaunch/Keylauncher/Launch) and the MyPS2 Elf (if you really wanted to you could just put only the MyPS2 program on the memory card and rename it BOOT.ELF and it will just boot MyPS2 automatically, but you will have to delete your launch program or rename it. Also I haven't tried this but Keylauncher has a file browser and I think you may be able to access the MyPS2 partition with it so you could just put keylauncher on the memory card and load what ever ELF file you want off of the hard drive with it. I wouldn't recommmend using keylauncher though alot of people report alot of fried hard drives using this program.
