One thing I forgot to mention, the main game I wanted to check out, Stuntman, is the one that keeps locking up. Sometimes it locks up when I'm loading my saved game. Othertimes it'll play fine for about 5-10 minutes, and then it's freeze time. Big time bummer, because the load times are chopped pretty dramatically, when it plays.

Oh and about the compatability lists, they are helpful, but I'm finding it's still a YMMV affair (see Stuntman above. Some people claim it works. *shrugs*) Plus, I think the lists are all based on loading your games through the PS2. Some games listed as incompatable (Gradius 3/4, for instance) will work if you rip the game to your hard drive using a "replace bad sectors" mode, and then load it to the PS2 drive.

Another side benefit, I'm finally able to play the "Death label" mode in DoDonpachi 3. If you have this game, you know that the PS2 actually resets itself when you switch to "death label" so if you use the swap method, like I do, it realizes all of a sudden there's a JPN PS2 disc in the drive and you get the black screen of death. Not so for the hard drive. I haven't checked to see if the drive actually spins up, but if it does, you've got your HDAdvance disc in there, so it thinks everything is copasetic. Huzzah!

I'm pretty stoaked about this thing overall. I just wish someone would have the foresight to make an official thing like this.