So I actually bought another ARMax Evo. And, partly based on
RogsR34UK's info, a now-cheap Kingston 256MB "Data Traveller".
Somewhat to my surprise, the Kingston drive
did work as a "MAXdrive". The very first thing I plugged it into was the PS2--that might have been a factor. MAXdrives appear to be FAT (not FAT32) format. It's possible another drive, such as an old SanDisk one I have, might work if reformatted as FAT.
It's also possible a newer version of the MAXdrive software caused it to start working, whereas previous devices didn't.
But accessing the USB devices is hideously slow. Sometime I'll try the older version of software to double-check, but I don't remember them being that slow. It's on the order of at least a minute to find and display each filename on the device. Far from ideal.
PS2 memory card access with that software is somewhat faster, but still annoyingly slow. And also flakey. It takes a while before it finds the correct "icon" for a particular save (e.g. the rotating
GT4 cube).
You can put multiple "crushed"
GT4 saves onto the MAXdrive; when you look at them with a PC the name is something like
38546_12345_GranTurismo4.max
The first number appears constant (not sure what it exactly is...). The second varies, but doesn't follow an obvious pattern. E.g. newer ones aren't always larger numbers.
Compression does not work well; the files go down to only 1488KB from only slightly more (1534? 1495?) for uncompressed. On the PC, the size varies in the last few digits of the actual byte count, but not enough to change from "1488KB". This suggests to me that
GT4 saves are encrypted using an extremely large key.
A problem is that using the MAXdrive software on the PS2 there is no way to distinguish between the different compressed
GT4 saves. Even on the PC, the MAXdrive software fails to fill in the modification date! So as I save the file on my PC, I can make notes in a README file identifying the different versions. If I ever really want to get back an old save, I'll clear one MAXdrive, and copy only the single file to it.
Last night as a test I copied
GT4 saves to both the new MAXdrive and Kingston device. Then I copied the Kingston save to my PC, used my PC to wipe out the save on the MAXdrive and replace it with the one which came from the Kingston device. I then successfully restored it to an empty memory card, and it appeared to load properly. I.e. the Kingston device appeared to function properly as a flexible "archive" device.
After that I copied a bunch of old saves to the two new devices, and picked an old save from the Kingston device, restored it to the PS memory card, and went back in time to just after I completed my Super License.
Another test I should try sometime is renaming the save files to see what the restrictions are there. Also I wonder if it gracefully handles crud (e.g. a README.TXT might be nice) on the MAXdrive devices. I notice that on PS2 memory cards PS1 saves are shown by the MAXdrive software as "corrupted data".
But anyone using this software and these devices should bear
Balki's unfortunate experience in mind, and be very careful to have at least one save of important things on a PS2 memory card which goes nowhere near the active MAXdrive/ARMax/MAXmemory software.
Edit: Oh yes. I forgot to mention. This version of ARMax came in a nice silver-coloured "biscuit tin".
)
