This is just a proof of concept to show that older Fat PS2s can achieve the first part of the memory card manipulation. It's just that the copy part of the PlayStation driver does not allow the headers to be written properly enough for the game to understand on these models. A bit of a better sanity check is implemented. In order to achieve the manip, I switch to my 79k US PS2, and then switch back to my 37k Japanese PS2.

I've been testing a lot of memory card manipulations for Ogre Battle and have noticed some interesting differences between how the models seem to write data. It hasn't lead to anything useful, but I figured it might be fun to test if my assumptions were correct by trying out a very slow run of the Japanese Xenogears. Sure enough, it works!

Makes me wonder if the 90ks have significant differences for other games.

I'm using the Japanese RTA timing for Xenogears here, even though it's a little weird on PS2 - the boot into PS1 mode is essentially a full cold boot that cheat tools can't persist through, so I'm unsure why a power button boot is generally required. Eh, a tradition is a tradition.