[ISSUE]: USB only seen in v1.2.0-beta-1979; not found in v1.1.0, nor v1.2.0-beta-1981 and later

[RoboMWM]

Checks

• [X] I have checked existing OPL issues for duplicates and found none
• [X] I am using either OPL latest stable version, or archived version or OPL beta version

Describe the issue

OPL is seemingly not finding my USB device with both the latest beta (2119) nor latest stable (v1.1.0).

OPL v0.9.3 and v1.0.0 can see my drive, as well as v1.2.0-beta-1979 (and some earlier versions, such as 1942 and 1940, but did not test beyond that.)

Additional testing via the archived versions reveals that v1.2.0-beta-1979 is the latest-working version of OPL that sees the games on my flash drive.

Tested with same results on both an exFAT drive with a game in ISO format and a FAT32 formatted drive containing games in the USBExtreme format. Both are the exact same type, each 32GB. I can provide extra info about them, just let me know how and what info to get.

No modchip, just launching via LaunchELF in FreeMcBoot. BDM devices are enabled with what I presume is the default setting of Auto.

Similar issue reports

My issue is likely similar to https://github.com/ps2homebrew/Open-PS2-Loader/issues/1002 but the title and report is not very precise (it did help me get a starting point to test though, I was surprised to see it working with 1942!)

I queried for "1979", which provided https://github.com/ps2homebrew/Open-PS2-Loader/issues/1271 and https://github.com/ps2homebrew/Open-PS2-Loader/issues/871#issuecomment-1756242065, but my console has no modchip, nor do I know where to delete such a bmp file?

https://github.com/ps2homebrew/Open-PS2-Loader/issues/1295 was the first I found, which is recent, but none of the suggested versions made any difference.

Console model

SCPH-30001

OPL version / revision

OPL beta 1.2.0 1981

In which device(s) have you experienced this issue?

USB

Context and extra information

No response

[minatomuh]

i had a similar problem. ulaunchelf sees the drive but was not working on opl. it was in USB-FDD bootable mode when i checked on diskgenius. after i had changed, it started to work. i don't know why it didnt work since the boot mode should be insignificant but worth checking, it may fix the issue

[RoboMWM]

after i had changed, it started to work.

What did you change it to?

[minatomuh]

What did you change it to?

IIRC it was hdd but currently its usb-zip and it works

[RoboMWM]

WOW, that works! (USB drive was in FDD, I converted to USB-ZIP.) What in the world does that do/is there anything else that documents this "boot mode" of USBs??

[RoboMWM]

It appears the new USB drivers (I assume from ps2sdk) are at least looking for an active partition. I took a look at some of the other USB drives I have, and they all say "Active" for their partition (and do not designate any boot mode).

I do remember "reflashing" these USB drives with some obscure program that I can't remember years ago to get them to work with the PS2 before, if I recall correctly. Still strange to me though. Does Windows not set the FAT32 partition as active? And I still wonder what those other "boot modes" are...

This is how my USB drive was before:

This is how it is now, working and recognized by OPL:

This is another USB drive I had lying around that also works and is recognized (only the first ExFAT partition of course):

[rickgaiser]

Thanks for reporting this issue so extensively.

ps2dev drivers support both MBR and GPT partitioned disks. Then on these partitions it supports FAT32 and exfat.

However the "USB-FDD" mode seems to NOT use a partitioning type at all. It formats the entire drive as FAT32/exfat, without using MBR or GPT. I think this is the underlying issue.

[RoboMWM]

Interesting. Not sure why Windows reports it as MBR then. For now I'm keeping my other 32GB USB as-is if you'd like me to find out anything else about it; until I find a need to use it, as the zso compression is wonderful and allows me to fit all the games I mostly play on one single 32GB USB for now. Well, nevermind, just getting black screens with some games and zso :c is there a compatibility list for this?

Besides seeing the partition not being marked as "Active" in disk management, the "FDD" USB has 0 bytes of unallocated space... and different disk capacity...

Disk management and properties > volume tab for the USB with "FDD":

The working USB:

[AKuHAK]

This is how my USB drive was before:

can you open Sector editor and show us first sector for problematic USB drive

[RoboMWM]

This is the other USB drive, FAT32 formatted, that also was not recognized by OPL (identical results to the ExFAT-formatted USB, when it was formerly identified as an "FDD" USB). For reference: