Just coming back to this. Eventually the best solution was to use HDLBatch which of course just calls HDL_Dump. It seems most .bin/cue files can be installed via HDL_Dump without converting them first.
The files were all zipped because I downloaded them and they were compressed from the source.
<scratches head>, I can't remember specifically trying with a.zip or .7z, but I believe that the files need to be in either .iso or .cue/bin format to be installed by HDL_Dump. That's the exact kind...
Ok, thank you to those who responded. What I was looking for was a sort of "best practices" for sorting, unzipping, and installing games to an internal PS2 HDD. Here's what I ended up doing:
I got the estimated available size of my drive in MB after OPL and had been configured to use the HDD...
This is what I suspected, but I couldn't quite figure it out, and I didn't see it in the tutorials that I was using. Is the "game list file" a specific file or is it the data in the CFG folder?
Ok, I'm about to start copying games to an internal HDD on a PS2 Phat. This going to take a LONG time, and I want to make sure that I'm using the best process to do this. I also have a few questions that have popped up since I've done my initial testing with a few games. My console is soft...
I actually didn't test the images created with the ImgBurn method above, but I assume that it does NOT work.
2 methods that I did test successfully
1) WinBin2Iso
2) Mounting with WinCD Emu and using OPL Manager's Disc/Convert to ISO tool
Are there any newer documentation or written tutorials?
His PopStarter stuff is still visible. I didn't check all the pages, but the main page shows it was last updated in February. - https://bitbucket.org/ShaolinAssassin/popstarter-documentation-stuff/wiki/Home
Apparently the OPL guide was...
Oh, I can confirm that ImgBurn v2.5.8.0 was able to convert Aqua Aqua from BIN/CUE to ISO. I did it before I found this thread.
I was just wondering if that ISO would actually work on the PS2. I will test it and report back.
I've got my PS2 with FMCB and OPL working. I'm wondering what to do to get PS1 games working too? I've been reading a lot of tutorials and info on this site, but I haven't seem to come across instructions for that yet. Can anyone point me to some documentation?