Fix MMCE VCD reliability, HDD probing, and device defaults

[NathanNeurotic]

Overview

Four functional commits keep each requested change reviewable:

1. Silence speculative HDD config probes

   • Preserve legacy APA and BDM-HDD config discovery.
   • Suppress startup error 401 when no HDD is expected.
   • Correct the legacy getcwd buffer handling.

2. Fix MMCE VCD art-quiesce ordering

   • Drain the MMCE artwork worker before VCD pre-launch file access.
   • Leave the POPSTARTER selector and handoff unchanged.

3. Make BDMA replacement transactional

   • Validate the live driver pair before trusting its marker.
   • Back up a complete prior pair and restore it after replacement failure.
   • Write the new marker only after both modules install successfully.
   • Allow a corrupted empty marker to be replaced, but do not restore that empty marker during rollback.

4. Default Device Settings entries to Manual or Off

   • BDM, HDD, Network, Apps, MMCE, and Favourites: Manual.
   • USB, iLink, MX4SIO, and exFAT HDD toggles: Off.
   • Network default: SMB with Manual startup.
   • Existing saved settings continue to override shipped defaults.

A fifth formatting-only commit applies the repository's required clang-format 12 configuration to the single pre-existing line flagged by the repository-wide CI check. The final empty bookkeeping commit records that formatter-generated tree through a normal push so GitHub can execute CI without Actions-token approval gating.

Validation

Do not treat this PR as test-ready until the complete compile matrix and CI format check are green. Hardware tests should cover HDD-less startup, legacy HDD config discovery, repeated MMCE VCD launches during artwork browsing, interrupted BDMA replacement, corrupted marker recovery, and fresh Device Settings defaults.

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

HDD probing now supports silent failure reporting, configuration defaults use unified SMB/manual networking, MMCE launch ordering quiesces art loads before VCD handoff, and BDMA installation validates, backs up, and restores live driver files.

Changes

Launch and device probing robustness

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Silent HDD probing and alternate-device safety include/hddsupport.h, src/hddsupport.c, src/opl.c	Adds silent HDD module loading for legacy configuration probes and safely handles getcwd() failure during alternate-device probing.
MMCE launch quiescing src/mmcesupport.c	Aborts MMCE art-image loads before VCD handoff and warns when quiescing fails.
Network configuration defaults and reconciliation include/opl.h, src/opl.c	Updates legacy network derivation, fresh-install SMB/manual defaults, device start modes, and transport flags.
BDMA installation validation and recovery src/vcdsupport.c	Bounds backup reads, verifies both live modules, restores previous files after failed installation, and requires valid modules alongside the matching marker.

Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~45 minutes

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Launch
  participant vcdEnsureBdmaForLaunch
  participant vcdBdmaLivePairPresent
  participant vcdEquipBdma
  participant MemoryCard
  Launch->>vcdEnsureBdmaForLaunch: ensure BDMA for launch
  vcdEnsureBdmaForLaunch->>vcdBdmaLivePairPresent: validate live module pair
  vcdBdmaLivePairPresent->>MemoryCard: read both driver files
  vcdEnsureBdmaForLaunch->>vcdEquipBdma: install when marker or pair is invalid
  vcdEquipBdma->>MemoryCard: back up existing pair and marker
  vcdEquipBdma->>MemoryCard: write new pair and marker
  vcdEquipBdma->>MemoryCard: restore backup or clean up failed installation

Loading

Possibly related PRs

• NathanNeurotic/Open-PS2-Loader#189: Updates related unified network defaulting logic.
• NathanNeurotic/Open-PS2-Loader#199: Defines related network start-mode and protocol persistence behavior.
• NathanNeurotic/Open-PS2-Loader#233: Implements related transactional BDMA driver replacement behavior.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 40.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title is concise and accurately reflects the main themes of the change set, including MMCE VCD, HDD probing, and default settings.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch agent/unified-mmce-vcd-fixes

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[NathanNeurotic]

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Code Review

This pull request introduces a silent HDD module loading mechanism to prevent false-positive connection errors on HDD-less consoles during speculative legacy config discovery. It also moves the MMCE art-loading abort check before the VCD launch path to avoid card IO contention, improves safety in tryAlternateDevice by checking getcwd and increasing buffer size, and implements a robust backup-and-rollback mechanism for BDMA driver installation on memory cards. Feedback points out that the backup allocation function fails on empty files, which could block driver installation if a previous install was corrupted or left an empty marker file.

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