My fliptop arrived!

[Milk Chan]

Two and half hours to install because the stupid reset/eject clip wouldn't go in properly. It ended with me nail gluing it (well my brother did that lol). I have a few general questions though:

1. Should there be a dull bumpy noise from it (not really a rattle as if somethings loose, just kind of a dull buzzing sound)?

2. When I get my swap magic and open the lid, will the disc still be spinning? I tested it out on an AR code disc and put in another game (I knew it wouldn't read the game) but the disc was still spinning.

3. Has anyone else had a slightly worse disc tray afterwards, like it won't open as it used to (mostly the same, just a tad slower)?

This was for a fat model PS2, not a slim one.

[Bobbias]

I gots me an OLDSCHOOL fat PS2 and my tray opens slowly without a mod. It has a sort of lag before it closes, like it's struggling to get the strength to pull it closed, and recently, it's been really touchy, so if i bump it by accident, or jiggle it when I'm taking out the CD, it will try to close, so it could just be that you're PS2 is old, and has been opened.

[vladgd]

1. Should there be a dull bumpy noise from it (not really a rattle as if somethings loose, just kind of a dull buzzing sound)?

if you mean sometimes when you boot a disk, i get the same thing.

2. When I get my swap magic and open the lid, will the disc still be spinning? I tested it out on an AR code disc and put in another game (I knew it wouldn't read the game) but the disc was still spinning.

normally, no, sometimes, yes.

3. Has anyone else had a slightly worse disc tray afterwards, like it won't open as it used to (mostly the same, just a tad slower)?

and yea, it doesn't feel the same as it used too.  however, i just insert all my disks through the top anyway, faster imo.  unless you are playing a multi disk game, you don't need to use the disc tray.

[Milk Chan]

normally, no, sometimes, yes.

So if it does it every time, did I do something wrong? Will games not run if the disc is still spinning for swap magic and I try to switch it?


And to quintuple check because i'm paranoid, all I need to run imports/burns are the fliptop and swap magic?

[Bobbias]

Yes. or a more detailed explanation, read further:


I'm not 100% on this, but as far as I know, this is how it works:
The reason that burned games won't run is because there's a special part of  PS2 game that is encrypted bootable code. You can't burn the necessary code onto a CD with normal CD burners, so it is impossible to place the correct bootable code in a burned PS2 disk. That means that you need a CD that will A) boot the PS2 like a normal game would, and B) allow it to be swapped out without freezing, like most games do. Swap Magic performs both those actions.

For imported games: These games do have the bootable code on them, but your PS2 is programmed to refuse to boot CDs that are marked as not for your region, so when it reads the region info on the import, it refuses to boot it, and when you swap with Swap Magic, you are bypassnig the need to read the region data, so it plays the disk without knowing that it is imported.

As I said, I may have some details slightly off, but I'm 99% sure that that is exactly how it works.

[Spectere]

No, there is no encrypted boot code to speak of.  If the boot code itself were encrypted the swap trick wouldn't help at all.

The PS2 takes advantage of home burners not being able to duplicate certain parts of the discs, much like PC "solutions" like SecuROM and SafeDisc.  Whenever you press the power or eject buttons it checks for a section on the disc.  The one special thing that Swap Magic does (aside from being a valid PS2 "game") is report that it's an entire DVD so that any game can safely boot (the PS2 will accept discs that are smaller than the booted one, but not larger -- probably has to do with how it reads the data from the drive) and stop the drive motor so that discs could be safely swapped using a fliptop or the slide trick.  Since the power/reset button is never pressed during or after the swap process (and therefore, the disc's authenticity isn't checked) the system has no idea that anything is amiss.

This is why multi-disc games don't work with the swap trick simply because they generally keep the drive motor spinning until the eject button is pressed.  You'll go to swap a disc, push eject, slide the tray back in, put your burned copy in, and FAILURE.  If it really worked using encrypted boot code that wouldn't be an issue since the system would have already been booted.

[Milk Chan]

No, there is no encrypted boot code to speak of.  If the boot code itself were encrypted the swap trick wouldn't help at all.

The PS2 takes advantage of home burners not being able to duplicate certain parts of the discs, much like PC "solutions" like SecuROM and SafeDisc.  Whenever you press the power or eject buttons it checks for a section on the disc.  The one special thing that Swap Magic does (aside from being a valid PS2 "game") is report that it's an entire DVD so that any game can safely boot (the PS2 will accept discs that are smaller than the booted one, but not larger -- probably has to do with how it reads the data from the drive) and stop the drive motor so that discs could be safely swapped using a fliptop or the slide trick.  Since the power/reset button is never pressed during or after the swap process (and therefore, the disc's authenticity isn't checked) the system has no idea that anything is amiss.

This is why multi-disc games don't work with the swap trick simply because they generally keep the drive motor spinning until the eject button is pressed.  You'll go to swap a disc, push eject, slide the tray back in, put your burned copy in, and FAILURE.  If it really worked using encrypted boot code that wouldn't be an issue since the system would have already been booted.

So basically Swap magic is special in the case of how it stops the disc from spinning to safely switch games out? If you open the tray on a normal game it will still be spinning?

[Spectere]

Yeah, generally the disc continues to spin when you play games.  I believe older versions of Action Replay, GameShark, et al, do stop the disc during swaps but I can't say from experience (my copy of ARMAX keeps the disc spinning, preventing it from being used as a lol h4x device).  Since stopping the disc motor isn't necessary on any PlayStation console (since all of them perform the "o shi stop teh motor" function when the drive or lid is opened) you can kind of think of it as a cheap way to secure it a bit more.

[Milk Chan]

Hopefully it'll work fine when I get it .