[Geoduck]

Welcome to the club, dude--one of which I used to be a member of.

I had a Xenosaga DVD9 and couldn't get it to work; not without a Gameshark 2, anyways. It's strange that you said Gameshark 2 couldn't help you boot the disk. My PS 2 is also a V7 (but fitted with a Magic 2 chip), and it worked (thank God!) with the Gameshark.

What version is your Gameshark 2? I have version 3.0, so maybe that's the difference.

Hope I'm not confusing more than helping...